


Hey that sounds like my luck, I get the short end of it

by CaptainnAustralia



Series: Early Morning Take Me Over [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF!Stiles, Everyone Is Alive, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:25:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainnAustralia/pseuds/CaptainnAustralia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family can fuck things up</p><p>=OR=</p><p>The sequel to I Love To Be The Underdog in which a surprise guest in town really makes life difficult -- and there isn't a single supernatural thing about them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MajorAccent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorAccent/gifts), [intergalacticju](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intergalacticju/gifts).



> Sequel created due to high demand -- chapters to be posted with semi-regularity. 
> 
> Title from Imagine Dragons 'Underdog'

It was the stereotypically dark, dingy basement, with a leaking pipe and everything. Stiles’ was stock-still, his breath heavy, as the banging in the halls behind a heavy steel door drew closer and louder. He was armed; the knives stolen, the fight-ready padded clothing requisitioned without permission, the gun borrowed with no intention of returning. The blood coating his body, however, was all his.

“Scott,” he hissed into the headset thoughtfully provided by Danny, because he needed his back-up, if at any point he’d needed back-up it was now. Where the hell was he? Scott was meant to blow up the wall directly behind him.

Stiles was _bait_ not _lunch,_ god damn it.

There was no reply and Stiles swallowed heavily. They were close. So close that he could practically hear the individual drips of saliva falling from the distorted jaws and pointed teeth that longed for his flesh.

“ _Scott_ ,” he hissed more venomously. He double checked his supplies and his surroundings, knowing that it didn’t matter how many times he looked in the same packs there would always be a meagre supply staring back at him; that there was no way out of this one. He’d backed himself into a corner.

This was it.

The door shuttered as something heavy smashed into it and a large dint appeared.

“Scott!”

Okay so maybe he was sounding a little hysterical that time, sue him. He was about to die.

“Stiles?” Scott’s crackled voice sounded down the line, distant and broken.

Bad connection.

_Honestly._

“Holy sweet mother of Jesus you asshole, where have you been?! I’m cornered, basement left, behind the steel-plated door and I need an out ‘cuz they’re really,” the door shattered hard and there was a bend appearing in the hinge, “ _getting in, a little help,”_

“Sorry man, Allison and Isaac were here and I just got really distra—“

Stiles’ eyes went wide as a scabbed hand curled over the edge of the door, pulling at the metal.

“SCOTT! SHUT UP AND HELP!”

“Oh, right, hang—“

Stiles flinched as the wall behind him exploded ash and brick flinging over him and the room. He was barely through the hole when the door gave in, flattening itself against the floor with a deafening crash. Stiles’ was running, desperate and fast.

“Fuck dude, your heart is out of control right now,”

“Gonna die,”

“Just get to the corner,”

“WHICH CORNER,”

“Red X on the left wall,”

“Okay I see—“

He didn’t get to finish his sentence.

Something heavy was on top of him in seconds and screams echoed through the hallways that were quickly painted red with blood.

There wasn’t even time to respond. No chance to fight back.

Game over.

“Stiles?”

Stiles swore, whipping off the headset as he watched the zombies munch on the animated corpse of his avatar, and reaching for his phone.

“What happened to Bro Night?” Stiles demanded the second Scott picked up.

“I know,”

“No significant others. No pack piles. No homework. No interruptions. Just you, me, a two star video game and the best internet connection Jackson’s money can buy,”

“I know,”

“I just died Scott, I don’t think you understand,”

“It’s just, with all my classes and working with Deaton, I don’t really get to see them much, you know? And they came all the way over,”

“They live ten minutes away dude,”

“and I missed them. I mean, don’t you miss Derek?”

“Low blow,” Stiles muttered, sinking into his chair while his computer flashed at him to restart the game or quit. Of course he missed Derek. But Derek would be home tomorrow and that didn’t matter. Scott was playing on a rare weakness – Derek didn’t often leave town when Stiles was home from school – and he knew he’d get away with it.

“Come on, we’re nearly on summer break. It won’t happen again, I swear.”

Stiles could practically hear the puppy eyes.

“Hope not. I’m gonna have nightmares about those zombies getting me.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure you are.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, glancing at the clock while he did so.

“Okay, I better crash. I have to finish this stupid paper tomorrow before Derek gets home,” he winced scrubbing a hand over his head, “Milken has been on my ass about my final report.”

“Well, you volunteered for that program,”

“I know, I know,”

“And they did say it was their first time running it so they’ll expect some pretty amazing results, and they were trusting you to produce those,”

“Stop making me feel bad about slacking off.”

“You didn’t totally slack off. I’m guessing that thing with ghouls distracted you,”

Stiles shuddered – ghouls were about as fun as… well… ghouls. All the worst features of zombies and ghosts combined with intelligence? Stiles’ was still recovering from that one.

“And those hunters from down south,”

“We don’t speak of that.”

Scott snorted. The hunters had been amateurs, more of an annoyance than a threat, but they were creative and slippery. In the end the pack had shut them down and handed them over to Chris to be both properly trained and schooled in the way of the ‘grey area’ that was Stiles’ pack.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, I’ll let you go. You still down for the borderline run this weekend?”

“Yup,”

“Is Derek going to be all overbearing and supervise and give speeches about respecting the territory lines again?”

“Yup,”

“Is he going to propose?”

“Yup,”

“Does he know you found the ring and the cue cards Lydia wrote and the letter from your Dad giving him permission?”

“Nope,”

“Awesome. Allison’s started planning the wedding.”

“Tell her I want it Batman themed,” Stiles joked and Scott laughed.

“Will do,” Scott chuckled before saying his goodbyes and hanging up.

Stiles stretched in his seat, pulling his arms over his head and tossing his phone on his bed. He minimised the game on his computer screen to reveal a half written discussion.

“I’ll finish you later,” he muttered, clicking the save button and closing the lid before standing and strip walking his way to the bed. He flopped onto his stomach and reached for his phone automatically.

**TO: My Macaroni**

_Scott let the zombies eat me you should bite him when you get home_

Stiles pulled the pillow under his head and settled his chin onto the downy softness, staring at the bright screen until the phone vibrated in his hands.

**From: My Macaroni**

_Goodnight Stiles._

Sighing, Stiles curled into a ball.

**To: My Macaroni**

_Unlikely. Bed’s empty._

**From: My Macaroni**

_Tomorrow. I’ll be home soon. Be good._  

**To: My Macaroni**

_Too long. No promises._

**From: My Macaroni**

_Goodnight Stiles._

**To: My Macaroni**

_You already said that, but goodnight to you too if you’re that insistent._

_Miss you though. Love you._

Stiles stretched out on the bed and waited.

**From: My Macaroni**

_Love you too, asshole._

Grinning, Stiles tossed his phone onto the side table and lay back on his bed, looking up at the light on his ceiling. He closed his eyes slowly, his hands lifting to slot behind his head in the picture of ease.

Life had gotten… tricky, to say the least, over the past year. The pack was fine, perfect even though they were sometimes scattered across the country in lumps of twos and threes, attending random universities that fit their needs. The pack bank account (“For emergencies, not pizza night Stiles,”) suffered a little whenever there was a Beacon Hills problem and everyone needed to fly home for the weekend. Or whenever people missed each other.

It suffered often.

Luckily, between all of them making regular inputs and some people (cough, Derek, cough) putting their savings in, it was a pretty full account – lots of zeros on the end of a pretty little eight.

The point is the last year was sort of difficult. Ghouls, for one thing, were real and totally, TOTALLY gross. Hunters, they came and went like flies on a corpse, that is to say they came and didn’t leave ever. At one point Jackson even managed to piss of a witch enough that she turned him into a giant lizard. Derek had personally arrested at least three pack members on different occasions for different reasons, including Stiles, and regularly fined the hunters going through town like it was the best part of his day. Sometimes it was – sometimes it was a stupid, dangerous game, but he was the Alpha (sort of) of an established pack in a job that kept him front and centre in the public eye, and he felt safe.

And Stiles, well, don’t even get started on Stiles. For a few weeks the whole pack thought that maybe Stiles, the human Alpha, was not so human after all.

They, of course, were wrong. Stiles the human Alpha was most certainly the most human thing in the world. His grandmother on the other hand?

She was a little less so.

\-------

“I’m a what?”

“Conductor, honey, I’ve already explained. Would you like some more, Derek?”

Stiles was too busy staring at the table with his mouth hanging open to catch Derek’s panicked sideways glance, Stiles’ grandmother staring him down with a cheeky smile and a pasta scoop.

“Ugh, thank you, really, but I’m stuff—“

“Nonsense, you’re a growing wolf! Have some more, you’re too skinny, just like my little garmhac,”

“But really, a conductor? I’m like a freaking lightening rod?”

“Stiles,” she tutted, her Irish tongue twisting around the word in distaste (Derek had learned that she didn’t approve of the nickname that had replaced her late husband’s, but she used it all the same. She respected Stiles’ choice in the matter.) “you’re not this stupid.”

“But,”

“You can be a spark. You have the potential, if you believe it hard enough, to act as a conduit of magic. You cannot cast it. You most likely will be unable to control it. However, you can be a vessel for it to travel through, and act out its actions through. I really cannot be any clearer,” she sounded a touch annoyed as she slapped another serving of something vaguely green on Derek’s plate.

\-----

Stiles’ grandmother was what the Wiccan world would call ‘paranoid’. She had cast a protection spell on the mail before it left her home (“To make it reach its destination! Magic is fickle garmhac, I didn’t know it would translate protection from getting lost into something so… explosive.”) and it had reacted to Stiles’ blood from his paper cut, fluttering into flames. Unfortunately, it had passed the protection spell (temporarily) onto Stiles because he was an ever so helpful ‘conductor’ and the remaining energy from the magic needed somewhere to go. Stiles, who was bleeding (“A paper cut!) and burnt (“Yeah, _from the evil letter!”_ ) was put into a protective magic bubble that, when breached by a supernatural creature like his lovely deputy werewolf boyfriend, had lashed out as effectively as possible.

With lightening.

The point of it all was this: Stiles was not a magic being and could not, in any way or form, produce or utilize magic the same way his grandmother could. He could, however, be the connecting point for magic if he believed it hard enough – just enough for little things, like spreading mountain ash and adding blessings to runes, a fact that was helpful to him on multiple occasions.

Stiles’ phone beeped at him again.

**From: My Macaroni**

_I can practically hear you being all whiney in your own brain and I’m 3000 miles away. Actually GO to sleep Stiles. Meredith gave me a heap of books to bring back for you and if you’ve got bags under your eyes I’m going to hide them._

Laughing, Stiles’ put his phone on the charger and kicked at the covers on his bed until he could roll under them and pull them back up.

Tomorrow. Everything would go back to normal tomorrow. Derek would be home from his meeting with the pack in New York that he and Laura used to know. Stiles could finally start believing that it really was the holidays and that he wasn’t killing himself by volunteering as research assistant to get in the good books of some professors. He could go back to pretending that he actually lives with the pack full time, instead of just on holidays because Berkley is just a little _too_ far to drive every day.

Tomorrow, after he handed in his last report to his stupid professor, he could finally relax and enjoy his holidays before he had to go back to school.

Tomorrow, things would go back to normal.

\------

Only, it wouldn’t.

\------

James Redford was born at 4:26am on a Thursday morning in the middle of a particularly freezing cold snap after 23 (and a half!) hours of labour. This was a very inappropriate time to be born, and his mother never let him forget it.

“You couldn’t have come out just, like, one day later?” She would always tease.

You see, his mother was Tabitha (“Call me Tabby, like the cat,”) Redford and she gave birth at the tender young age of twenty and had just been finishing off her first year of college when James made his appearance in the world – right, in fact, in the middle of the exam period that she had been determined to finish.

“Explaining to my biology professor that I couldn’t take my ‘Factors for Life’ final because I was busy creating it was the second best part of my week,” she would always sigh, because James had been born at 4:26am on the Thursday morning of Tabby’s final exam.

Don’t worry, she always added, she got to take a make-up.

If you’re waiting to hear that Tabby died painfully when James was young, then keep waiting, because Tabby just moved to Atlanta and her aerobics class would be very disappointed to hear about her death. No, James had a perfectly normal childhood, full of school work, and silly moments eating cake on birthdays, and scaring away Tabby’s boyfriends by biting them when they made her sad until he turned thirteen and she brought home a boyfriend who never made her sad and James begrudgingly accepted that biting your step dad at 13 was not a valid option. Tabby Redford never became Ms. Paul Hunts, and James never had to switch his name, but they did become their own family.

Paul still sends James photos of their new tomato garden in Atlanta. They were on great terms, as a family. They spoke regularly, caught up with things, and they visited each other as often as their schedules allowed.

Now, I bet you’re wondering why James Redford is important.

Well, you see, James was now at the ripe old age of 26 and freshly graduated from his Masters in Accounting, and he was about to do something that he hadn’t told his mother about. After years of carefully gathering information, of stealing away stories and chasing up old friends of his mother’s and a shit tonne of painful indecision, James Redford had found his biological father who, according to Tabby, had no idea he even existed.

“He had a promising career going his way Jamie baby, and we were just a summer thing... it would have made a lot of things a lot more difficult if I had told him. I wasn’t even in California when I found out about you! It was… easier.”

These were the facts of it all: James Redford was 26 years old and had a Masters in Accounting. His mother was named Tabby, like the cat, and his step dad grew tomatoes in his spare time. He was born at 4:26am on a Thursday morning in the middle of a particularly freezing cold snap after 23 (and a half!) hours of labour.

James Redford was also the reason things would not return to normal in the morning, because he had just crossed the border into Beacons Hills, clothes piled in the trunk and a post-it note stuck to the dashboard with the name of his father scrawled across it untidily.

And that name was Jonathon F. Stilinski.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “’Ello?” Stiles answered distractedly – Isaac could hear typing in the background. 
> 
> “Geronimo.” 
> 
> Yeah, they had a code word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -high pitched booming voice- 
> 
> ISAAC

“Um… hi, uh, excuse me, I’m looking for the records department?”

Isaac startled, nearly falling out of his rolling chair, catching himself on the edge of the desk at the last second and slamming his eyes shut tight to stop the gold glow from being seen.

What. The. Hell.

“Oh, god, sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you!”

Isaac sucked in a deep breath and turned, offering a trained smile.

_Remember, ask first, attack later. Don’t be foolish._  

“No, sorry it was my bad. It’s not very busy down here you know? So people sort of…”

“Shock you?”

“Yeah,” Isaac offers.

He’s lying, but he covers it well. The man before him is human, he can smell it, see the signs in the man’s slight slouch and fidgeting hands, but there was no lingering scent of gunpowder so it doesn’t worry him too much about being caught out. In truth, Isaac just wasn’t expecting a stranger.

“Sorry anyway. I’m James,” the man offered a hand, and Isaac took it, shaking as briefly as possible.

“Isaac. So how can I help?” he asks politely, because he does have a job to do. He breathed in slowly through his nose and resisted the urge to sneeze when it tickled, wrong in his nose.

Dust. Sweat. Old Spice. Fake leather from car seats. But there it was, pressed underneath the stranger’s skin – _Stiles._ Just enough of the scent to catch Isaac off guard, the way the Sheriff sometimes did when Isaac wasn’t paying attention, or like Derek did after Stiles spent the night. It smelt personal – intimate.

Whoever this was? He’d been close to Stiles – enough to touch him, or his things, for an extended period of time. Recently.

 “I’m looking for a person actually? Last name Stilinski.”

Isaac’s alarm bells went off, but he smiled even as he reached for his phone, disguising it as waking up his computer.

“Well we can’t just give out information on people, unfortunately – it’s a breach of trust,” Isaac’s voice was sympathetic, honest and endearing the way that Danny had coached it to be when he needed to lie.

“Oh,” James’ face fell, “I just… I need to find John Stilinski,” Isaac felt his hackles rise and his fists clench, forcing his wolf back; it was one thing to go for his alpha, another to go for the man who was practically a father to the whole pack, “and the last information I have on him is that he lived here. Could you just… is it possible to just find out if he is even still in town?”

Isaac opened his mouth to say ‘no, no he could not’ when a voice from behind him piped up.

“John Stilinski? You mean Sheriff Stilinski?”

Isaac took a long, slow breath in through his nose and counted back slowly from ten to keep his heart rate under control while James repeated ‘the Sheriff?’ questioningly at the new comer.

“Matt,” he let out through gritted teeth.

“What? It’s public knowledge,”

“I will _drown_ you if you don’t shut up,”

“He could have picked up a phonebook and known that Isaac. John Stilinski is the Sheriff of Beacon Hills. Sorry, Sir, Isaac is a little bit of a hoarder of knowledge. He doesn’t like to share. I don’t know how he got the front of desk job while I’m stuck back in photo processing.”

Matt eased himself up against the desk, grinning at James, totally unaware of Isaac’s inner turmoil. James, a complete stranger, basically smelled like… well as though he’d been close to Stiles, or through his things, just enough to make the scent cling to him.

If history was any indicator, James is a hunter who just spent an hour at the Sheriff’s home, rubbing himself through Stiles’ old things so that the scent was strong enough that Isaac would trust him – that had happened before, to Derek (“A friend of his from school – we have a project together, I’m just here to pick up Stiles’ research. He said he left it on the table?”)

That… that had been an experience.

It had taken them two days to find Derek in the end, Stiles skipping school for a whole week as a result.

Isaac remembers the moment that Stiles found out that Derek was missing perfectly – it was the only time he had been _scared_ of Stiles; not that Stiles would hurt _him,_ but of what he was capable of, of the anger that rolled under his skin, of the ruthless actions he took, and the control in his voice that maneuvered more than just his wolves. That was when Isaac realized Stiles didn’t need the red of the Alpha’s eyes when he could make up for it with the sticky red of blood against his skin.

That was eight months ago, barely a pin prick in a hectic year, and Stiles hated to bring it up, but a couple of the hunters survived, barely, and suddenly the Hale Pack had made a name for themselves. Their new reputation spread like wildfire, licking at the heels of hunters and other packs alike: If you value your life, stay _away_ from Beacon Hills. Obviously other supernatural creatures (see: Ghouls and Witches and a couple of pesky Fae) and some hunters (see: _morons_ ) didn’t heed this warning.

Since then, packs from all over the country have been approaching them, making treaties, offering to be allies, investigating the would be terror of the Californian Coast that was Stiles Stilinski – Human Alpha of the Hale Pack, who offended the earth into shaking with his very existence, who could tear a grown man apart with his bare hands if you dared to harm his pack, who could silence a room with just a look.

Stiles found it all hilarious of course, that people found _him_ threatening – he laughed so hard he fell off the couch when they first found out about the rumours surrounding him, and the pack had joined in. Some of the rumours were truly ridiculous, like the pack living in constant fear of him because he ruled with an iron fist, or that their pack was just Stiles’ sex slaves, or that Stiles, like a Basilisk, would kill you if you made eye contact.

Some of them though… well. Isaac liked to say to visiting pack representatives that the best way to defeat an opponent was to let them underestimate you; their pack looked like a bunch of kids, not the creatures from horror stories like they were made out to be. He’d always get serious near the end though, and grin in a way that always made Stiles push him off the couch because it was his, quote, ‘serial killer smile’, and tell the visiting packs that all stories have some touch of truth, now don’t they? There had even been a single Omega, Mary, who had come through with her daughter seeking asylum for a few weeks after hearing the rumours. She told them all the ridiculous things she’d heard; about Wolves who were stronger than the moon and who put hell hounds to shame, of a Hunter who had been tied to the pack and was a ghost who killed from three hundred yards away, of a Banshee who screamed for your death and then set you on fire to cause it, of a Medic who refused the bite, that could heal up any wound, human or otherwise because he trained under a druid, and of course, about the Human Alpha, who made all the others fall in line with a whisper.

Stiles made the supernatural world quiver in their boots, sure. But the pack as a whole? Made it bend and bed for mercy before they even asked.

This same pack sometimes wakes up on Sunday mornings covered in popcorn and each other after watching The Notebook for the 13th time.

 “So why are you looking into the Sheriff anyway?” Isaac was jolted back to earth by Matt’s question, refocusing on the two men in front of him.

“It’s, uh… it’s personal,” James shifted, uncomfortable under Matt’s stare, and Isaac mimicked the action without thinking, “but you’ve been really helpful. Thanks, thank you,” he nodded to Isaac, waving, and escaped from Matt’s beetle eye focus.

“He seemed nice,” Matt chirped, and Isaac didn’t bother to disclose the growl that rumbled out behind clenched teeth as he unlocked his phone and hit speed dial.

“You can’t use your phone at the desk,” Matt scolded and Isaac walked away – he just got up, slung his bag over his shoulder, and started walking, following the faint remainder of James’ scent, ignoring Matt’s calls to bring him back.

“’Ello?” Stiles answered distractedly – Isaac could hear typing in the background.

“Geronimo.”

Yeah, they had a code word.

“Where are you?” The change in Stiles’ voice was instantaneous and made the wolf in Isaac curl and whine – that was all Alpha.

“Work. Had a visitor.”

“Status?” Stiles word came out cold and demanding, but Isaac knew from experience that this was how he coped with the thought that one of his pack was in danger.

“I’m fine – he asked questions. Said he was looking for a John Stilinski.”

Stiles’ took a sharp breath in right as Isaac stepped into the bright light of the street, blinking to adjust. The scent was muddled out here, weaker under the weight of Stiles’ scent which seemed to effortlessly layer the town. Isaac squinted, trying to see if he could locate James among the crowds.

“And?”

“And Matt came out from the back and let it slip that John Stilinski was the Sheriff – and the guy, James, left right after that. I’m trying to follow him now, but I lost him in your scent. I’m going to the station now.”

“Is he covering it?”

Isaac swallowed.

“No… no Stiles he… he smelt like _you._ ”

Stiles hung up, but Isaac didn’t expect anything different. Isaac scanned the street again before taking off at a jog towards the police station.

He met Boyd and Danny at the steps, and they shoved through the door together – the officer at the desk doesn’t even spare them a second glance.

“Human, ’bout 5’11, thin but wiry, light brown almost dark blond hair and it’s short, like Scott’s, light brown eyes, freckles like Stiles’ and a couple of moles as well,” Isaac informs them without so much as a hello as they storm towards the office, some of the officers looking up from their desks curiously, “he smells like Stiles’ and leather – he’s been traveling recently. Pale button down, blue I think, dark jeans and a bomber jacket – seemed new, dark green with a patch on the sleeve, but I didn’t catch of what. Only wanted to know about the Sheriff.”

Boyd and Danny take it in a stride, and drop into the seats on either side of the Sheriff’s door with stiff backs while Isaac keeps going, entering without a pause while he knocked on the frame.

“Isaac?”

“Geronimo.”

The Sheriff stood, but Isaac put out his hand calmingly.

“Relax, we’re on it. We’re not actually positive there is trouble – only suspicious, but the guy was asking questions.”

“So you’re not taking any chances,” John sighed, lowering himself back into his chair and rubbing his eye tiredly.  

“Danny and Boyd are on guard.”

John chuckled and it was resigned. Isaac fought the urge to whine out loud at the sound of disappointment.

The last year had been hard on the pack but on the Sheriff it had been even harder. It was hard to go to war with the supernatural – it was even harder to watch from the sidelines, unable to do a god damn thing.

“I’m surrounded by police officers and you’ve got boys who can’t even legally drink yet protecting me?”

“We’ll let you know if we find anything else,” Isaac offers, “it could be nothing. It could be just an innocent person who asked the wrong questions and we’re overreacting. We’d rather waste our time for the afternoon and know that you and this town will be safe than wait for danger to come to us. After what happened last time…”

“I know, I know.”

“Thank you for your cooperation Sheriff. And… sorry. I know… this isn’t easy, when this happens. But we’re good at this now. Nobody has been really hurt in eight months. This is just precautionary – you really don’t have to worry just yet.”

The older man sighed again, but then he smiled, softly, and there was a touch of pride there that made Isaac stand a little straighter.

“You make a fantastic second, Isaac.”

All the air left Isaac in a _woosh_.

“Th… thank you, but Derek is the second, Sir.”

“Stiles told me that Derek is just as much of the Alpha as he is – he told me they are equals,” John said, eyebrows raised and Isaac stutters around his agreement to that, because technically that was true. They acted equally as leaders, but the pack relied on the supernatural community’s fear of a HUMAN Alpha, so Derek’s equality in the position was sometimes… shifted aside, to those outside the pack.

“And he told me that _you_ were the second wolf.”

Isaac was more than a little floored.

“I…”

John shook his head, like he knew that Stiles’ hadn’t actually discussed this with Isaac yet, even though Isaac had fallen into the role naturally with a little bit of nurturing from the pack.

“Go and finish your manhunt. I’ll be safe here with the other boys.”

Isaac nodded and slowly backed out of the office, closing the door with a soft click. He glanced sideways at Boyd, who rose an eyebrow, and at Danny, who stretched out lazily with a grin.

“Go on, _Second_ ,” Danny teased, making Isaac’s cheeks flush, “Stiles is probably freaking himself out. Go show him you’re okay so he’ll calm down.”

\-------------

Isaac shoved through the door of the apartment and nearly fell head first into Stiles, who immediately yanked him into a hug.

“I’m okay,” Isaac offered, wrapping his arms easily around Stiles in return.

“I know,” Stiles sighed heavily before stepping back and running a quick but critical eye over Isaac, “but I’m a worrier, that’s what I do. It’ll be the death of me.”

Isaac snorted because god, that was true.

“Derek?” He asked, his fingers itching for a hug from his other Alpha.

“He’s doing what he does best.”

“You found him?” Isaac couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Danny sent through the description you gave and Derek found him. Apparently he has a motel room down on fifth, and he’s currently at the library, using the computers.”

“So Derek is creeping on him.”

“Yup,” Stiles sighed, moving into the kitchen with Isaac trailing after him, “he’ll let us know if he makes a move but… I think so far Derek is unconcerned. He checked out the motel room and his car, didn’t find anything to hint at him being a hunter, or a witch, or… anything at all. Just a bunch of clothes and books and things that all smell vaguely like me. Which, creepy.”

“What do you think he wants?” Isaac asked while Stiles started fiddling with the dishes that were sitting on the edge of the sink drying, “because he smells like you and he asked about the Sheriff.”

“That’s only two points Isaac. I’ll be worried when he hits three.”

Stiles’ phone chimed on the bench and Stiles scrambled to open it.

“He’s moving. Looks like he’s heading toward the station. Derek thinks he seems pretty harmless; thinks we should just find out what he’s after,” Stiles summarizes as he clicks his phone into lock and chews on his lip.

“Want me to come with you?” Isaac asks, because there is no way that Stiles _isn’t_ going down to the station to see this through.

Stiles’ shakes his head.

“I need you here – I let the others know and they’ll be here any minute. We don’t know the threat level, so I don’t want any premature action. Do your thing, keep them calm and in control, I know you can handle it.”

Isaac’s chest puffed up again, a small smile on his lips that Stiles’ almost misses in grabbing his jacket to move out.

“Um… I just, before you go,” Isaac called quietly, making Stiles pause, “am I… you know, just, it’s been mentioned, and I’m not sure if I am, but,”

“You’re the second, Isaac,” Stiles laughed, like he just realized his mistake about not telling Isaac earlier, “with Scott as your human equal.”

“Scott I get but… are… you sure? That you really… I mean Boyd …”

Stiles’ sobered instantly, stepping forward to catch Isaac in another hug.

“There is no-one I trust more to keep a cool head and lead this pack fairly when Derek and I aren’t around,” Stiles said as he pulled away, forcing Isaac to make eye contact as he said it, “and no-one I trust more to take care of them if, and when, we can’t.”

“Listen. Boyd would probably be a great second, but he isn’t our second. You are. Not because you were our first wolf, but because you have earned your place. You’ve proven that when I’m not able to keep it together you can take the reins,” Stiles offers, flushing slightly at the reminder of how quickly Stiles can lose control, how little prompting it takes to make him volatile, but his voice was steady, serious and honest, “and that you could be Alpha if you needed to be, Scott working with you. The two of you could run this pack easily without Derek and I. You’re our second and knowing that keeps me from going crazy at night.”

“Stiles,”

“Just say thanks and let me go quiz our mystery human?”

Isaac laughed, the noise almost shocked out of him.

“Thanks,” he said, trying to shove all of his sincerity into one word.

“You’re welcome,” Stiles grins, patting Isaac’s shoulder and heading for the door, pausing at the last second.

“Also Lydia wants Sugargliders, so you could do that. While you’re waiting.”

“You only use me for my baking skills don’t you,” Isaac deadpans, and Stiles shrugs.

“Nobody makes cookies like Isaac makes cookies,” he whined, snapping the door shut on Isaac laughter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You were looking for me?”
> 
> James snorted, because yeah, only his entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extreme apologies for the delay in posting! I've had exams, and started a new job. Life caught up with me -- but things have settled now and I should be back to posting sort of regularly. Thanks again for your patience, and your kind words of encouragement guys! As always, feedback is welcome.

James worked out.

That wasn’t an important fact, normally. But he did; he was fit. He could run, do a little fighting. He could hold his own in case he got mugged. It made his mother happy to know he could handle himself.

The point is – James wasn’t a completely weak guy. He could fight back.

That didn’t mean he was dumb though. It wasn’t like he was trying to start a something, especially in his… dad’s? father’s? place of work, but he still waited until he was most definitely safely inside the police station doors to turn around, almost catching the guy in the leather jacket.

“You’re following me,” he said, and that sounded way more dramatic in the movies, without the quiver that shot through his voice.

The dude narrowed his eyes sharply and James took a hasty step back, pulling his book bag closer to his side, blinking at the glare he was on the receiving end of.

“Dude, if you’re going to follow someone? Don’t do it so closely,” he let out, and the guy twitched.

The guy bared his teeth, “Who are you?”

“Who am I? You’re the psycho who’s been following me for the last three hours! Who are YOU?”

Okay so maybe James was a little bit more freaked out than he liked to let on – he let his voice grow slightly, in case things escalated. This was a police station for god’s sake. Someone was going to hear him. As if on cue, right as the door behind leather jacket man clanged open, and a kid stumbled inside, catching onto Leather Jacket’s shoulder.

There was a second where James was worried the murder he’d witness wouldn’t be his own, but rather the kid’s, when he opened his mouth.

“Down boy,” he muttered to the Leather Jacket, before offering James a smile, “hi.”

James took another step backwards.

“Excuse me,” he offered politely with a nod, backing towards the desk. The kid’s face fell slighting.

“Wait, James, right?”

“Stiles,” Leather Jacket growled, like holy shit who _growled_ , and James stopped. The officer behind the desk stood up, and James watched as Stiles raised his hand and shook his head, the officer sitting back down again. He swallowed; suddenly this wasn’t the best idea.

“How do you know my name? Are you following me too?”

“Ha! No, I’m not. He was. I’m not. See it’s a small town, word gets around fast. And you, wanting to see the Sheriff? That’s a fast word to be spread.”

“I didn’t realize that was a crime,” James offered with a weak smile because holy shit. He was going to be totally murdered right here in the middle of the police station, probably less than fifteen feet from the man he’d dreamed about meeting since he knew what a dad was.

“It’s not. It’s just… curious,” Stiles shrugged, and his smile _seemed_ sincere, “especially for me. Why do you want to see the Sheriff?”

The last bit came out almost like a demand and James’s eyebrows furrowed.

“That’s none of your business,” he said.

“If it’s not official police business, then it’s my business.”

“Oh yeah,” and James knows it’s childish to argue back, but he can’t help it for some reason, “and how to do you figure that?”

“’Cuz he’s my dad,” Stiles said bluntly, and James felt all the air rush out of him.

He hadn’t seen that. A cursory internet search had given him little, some stuff about his dad solving larger cases, a picture or two of him at crime scenes.

He hadn’t looked too deeply, wanting to learn about his dad from his dad, not from old newspaper articles. He just wanted to speak to him.

James hadn’t bothered to look up if he’d had a family. There had been a link, a memorial for the “beloved wife of a local deputy _”_ , but he didn’t click it – it was something he’d wanted to hear about in person, something they could talk about.

He didn’t bother took check if John had had other kids. Part of him selfishly believed, almost hoped, he would be the only one. That someone else hadn’t gotten what he had missed out on.

James knew that his jaw was hanging open and his eyes were wide and he probably looked like a cartoon character but…

Holy shit he had a brother.

Well, half-brother. Half-little-brother.

James jumped nearly a foot in the air when the foyer suddenly filled with people, an older, harder voice shifting through the crowd, “alright, break it up.”

James recognized the face of the man who spoke, and part of him hurt that he didn’t recognize the voice.

That was him. That was --

“Dad,” he let out, almost a whisper, but his own word was crushed under the volume of Stiles own horrified, “Dad!”

“Don’t,” the Sheriff said sharply, raising his hand and earning a respectful silence from everyone in the foyer, “my office, all of you. Now.”

James wanted to laugh – he hadn’t even introduced himself and he was already being scolded, but he fell in line with the others, directed through the station under the watchful eyes of several officers, all of whom seemed to be eyeing _him_ the most. Which was rude – he hadn’t done _anything_ wrong!

The office was small, cramped when filled with people – more people than James remembered there being before.  The Sheriff sat behind his desk, and Stiles fell into one of the cushioned chairs in front of it, Leather Jacket behind him and two others flanking on either side. They looked young, probably the same age as Stiles, but strong.

He had to admit, James was feeling pretty under-matched.

“Stiles,” The Sheriff said, nodding at the flanking teens and earning himself a sigh from the younger boy.

“Danny, Boyd, update Isaac.”

That was that – there was no argument, not questions. The two boys just left, nodding at the Sheriff and not even bothering to spare James a glance and _what the hell_.  

The Sheriff cleared his throat and Stiles groaned.

“No, come on Dad, at least let Derek stay!”

The Sheriff and Leather Jacket, or rather Derek, seemed to have a conversation with their facial expressions.

“I’ll be right outside,” Derek ended up settling on, tossing James a glare, “and I’ll be listening.”

He pressed a kiss to Stiles cheek, nodded to the Sheriff like the younger boys had, and left.

“So when someone said there was a fight happening in the foyer,” the Sheriff started when the door clicked shut, “I have to say that this not what I expected.”

“Dad,” Stiles said, leaning forward in his chair, but he was quickly hushed.

“I think we should let the guest speak first Stiles. That is your rule.”

James watched curiously as Stiles winced, settling back into his chair. And then the Sheriff turned to him, giving him a sort of open and questioning look.

“You were looking for me?”

James snorted, because yeah, only his _entire life._

_“_ Sorry,” he offered quickly, realizing how that might have come across, “I’m just, sort of nervous. I didn’t think I’d have an audience.”

“Well, why don’t you just tell me what I need to know, or ask your question? We’ll stay completely silent until you’re done, _won’t_ we Stiles?” The Sheriff said, crushing whatever was about to leave his son’s mouth and getting an angry nod in response.

James shifted in his chair, fidgeting with the strap of his book bag, Stiles tensing in response, and cleared his throat.

“Um. Okay. This. Might sound a little bit weird, and I like… had a speech prepared but it was never good enough, so I’m thinking winging it is best, but um. Right. Do you remember a Tabitha Redford?”

There is silence for a long moment, and James feels like a part of him crumbles away at the confusion written so deeply across The Sheriff’s face without a flicker of recognition.

He’d been sort of hoping that he wouldn’t have to explain who his mother was _to his Dad_.

“Um. Or possibly Tabby?” He offered hopefully.

Some of the deeper wrinkles cleared out.

“Wait,” John said slowly, “I know that name.”

The muscles in James’s shoulders unknotted; he remembered her.

“You would have known her about… twenty-six years ago. Give or take. Say. Nine months?”

Next to him, he heard Stiles teeth snap together, and turned slightly to look.

James knew he’d worked it out.  

“Where are you going with this?” The Sheriff’s voice was slightly sharper now, and James’ flinched minutely in response.

“Well. Um. I guess. I just,” he let out a quick burst of air, muttering ‘fuck it’ quietly after.

“I’m your son,” he said finally, and then slumped back into his chair like all of his strings had been cut.

The silence after that statement was absolute. James wasn’t even sure that his dad was breathing.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” he snapped, bristling slightly – it wasn’t like his mom really slept around when she was nineteen. He’d done his research thoroughly into her past, even if he hadn’t gone too far into his father’s – it felt like an invasion to learn about his Dad from anyone except the man himself.

Yeah, this was the bit that he hadn’t planned. The reaction. James held his breath.

“I don’t want anything from you,” he said finally when nobody spoke, “or anything. I’m not like… angry, or dying, or in need of money. I’m good for all of that. And Mom is fine! She’s in Atlanta, with Paul, so you don’t need to worry about that. I guess I uh… sort of wanted to meet you my whole life and, uh, then I graduated? And I thought. It’d be. A good. Time. I guess,” James finished lamely, tacking on a mumbled, “sorry.”

Stiles stood up sharply, making James jump, his spine ramrod straight.

“I have to go.”

“Stiles,” the Sheriff called, moving as if to follow, but the boy vanished quickly, not even bothering to close the door behind him. The Sheriff sank back down into his chair before eyeing James carefully.

James shifted, feeling like a suspect in a murder case, keeping his eyes down and shoulders slightly hunched, but didn’t say anything else.

“I don’t know what to say here to be honest kid,” John offered, and James looked up, hopeful.

“Um. Maybe that. We can catch up some time? Like get coffee? I’m hoping to stay in town for a while. If you want me too.”

John studied him, then nodded, rubbing his face roughly.

“Yeah. That’d be good. Sorry, I’m not…” he gestured, flicking his wrist, “really, jumping up and down. I’m a little shocked.”

“No, no, it’s okay! I bought some stuff, though, if you want it. Like. My birth certificate and some photos,” James rushed, rummaging through the book bag and pulling out a carefully prepared folder.

It was a copy of his whole life, painstakingly compiled, and he held it out to the Sheriff without hesitation.

“I know you can’t just believe me,” James said, “I know you need some proof. I’m happy to give DNA or whatever you need. And I’m serious about not wanting anything from you except some time. I just want to know you. And Stiles, if he ever speaks to me again.”

The Sheriff snorted, staring down at the file in his grip.

“He’s stubborn. But if you’re,” the _really my son, really his brother, really one of our family,_ went unsaid, covered instead by a cough, _“_ he’ll come around.”

The silence fell again.

“I should go,” James said awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck, “and let you, uh, process. But could we… meet up again?”

There was a flicker of hesitation before the Sheriff responded, and even though he knew it should be there, James still felt the ping in his heart for it, “sure. When and where?”

“Tomorrow?” James offered, then winced, because that was almost too eager, “or whenever you’re free. And anywhere you would like. I don’t really know anywhere around here yet and uh, this town is sort of… really weird.”

The Sheriff snorted at that, relaxing slightly.  

“Tomorrow is just fine. At Maria’s – it’s just across from the station, you can’t miss it.”

“Okay. Cool. Excellent! Thank you. Really.  I’ll. See you then, I guess,” James stood, not sure if he should shake his dad’s hand, or go for a hug, or just leave. In the awkwardness, he just waves while standing in front of the desk, and then flees from the room, almost taking the chair with him when his book bag gets caught on the corner.

The Sheriff stared down at the file in his hands and then back out to where he could just make out James leaving the station through his open office door and then picked up his phone.

“I’m coming round,” he said into the speaker without so much as a hello – Derek wouldn’t expect one right now, and if anyone else in the pack had answered then they would understand, “and I’m bringing some files with me. I’ll need a strong drink.”

He hangs up without getting a reply, rubbing at his temples, almost wishing it had been hunters instead.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia’s skin crawled with goose bumps and she raised an eyebrow at Isaac from across the room. 
> 
> “What am I missing?” she demanded, because wolf or not, she was their trouble sensor. 
> 
> “They’re fighting,” Isaac muttered, but it was Erica who added, “Derek is fighting. Stiles isn’t saying anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even going to lie, this is practically a filler chapter. It's also very Stiles' light -- this is more about the pack and how they interact. The next chapter will be longer, and be more content filled. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Isaac heard the argument before they even hit the building, tensing and watching the other wolves copy him; Boyd’s hands tightened on the kitchen counter and Erica stopped kicking her legs from where she was sitting next to him on the bench. Jackson and Danny straightened themselves up from their spot on the couch, Jackson lifting himself off the seat entirely, eyes locked on the door in anticipation. Even the humans knew something was wrong; Scott was pacing along the edge of the room, but he slowed as the wolves reacted, Alison pausing where she was fiddling with her knives. Lydia’s skin crawled with goose bumps and she raised an eyebrow at Isaac from across the room.

“What am I missing?” she demanded, because wolf or not, she was their trouble sensor.

“They’re fighting,” Isaac muttered, but it was Erica who added, “Derek is fighting. Stiles isn’t saying anything.”

Lydia let out a curse that seemed very out of place with her pastel floral dress, and swept up off the couch.

“Do we have any other information?”

Isaac gritted his teeth, head twitching towards the door.

“We’re about too,” he said as Derek’s key hit the lock and Lydia could finally hear what was happening.

“-is a pack issue! You can’t ignore h--,”

“Derek, **_stop it_** ,”

The ripple of that ran through the whole pack, making them stand straighter, stiller, made the wolves eyes flash, and Isaac heard Derek’s shut with a sharp snap.

“God, fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t…” Stiles sighed heavily, loud enough for Lydia to hear it through the wood, “just drop it Derek. We’re not in danger. We’re not being hunted, we don’t need protecting. I’m not worrying them. And I have a paper to finish. So, could we please just drop the issue for now?”

“You have to tell them Stiles. You know they’re listening in right now.”

The silence after that was harsh and the door opened suddenly enough for even the wolves to jump a little in response.

“All clear,” Stiles said, eyeing each of them in turn, “we’re fine. Sorry for panicking you.”

“But,” Derek tried again, and Stiles spoke louder, walking through the loft with sharp eyes following him, “and good catch to Isaac for picking up something suspicious. Everyone go back to your jobs and days and lives okay. We’ll talk about it more at the pack meeting tomorrow.”

“Stiles!” Derek called, but the younger man had already crossed the room, and was halfway up the staircase, “fucking hell,” he muttered, rubbing his face.

“Der, seriously,” Erica started and Derek just sighed and shook his head.

“It’s not my place Erica. Just give him some time.”

Slowly, everyone in the room came unstuck, trying to keep themselves from following their Alpha up the stairs. They all felt the unease, the palpable layer of fear that coated Stiles’ scent, but not the way they were used too – not fear for the pack, which always came with raw determination and a cold anger, or fear for his grades, which was always mixed with the stale sweat of having avoided the shower for three days straight. This was new. It curled through the pack and each felt the need to offer comfort, humans included.

“You’ll keep an eye on him, right?” Scott demanded, too human to fully understand what had just happened, but his priorities were to his best friend; whether he understood what was happening or not.

“As much as I can,” Derek promised. A year ago, he might have made a joke, or even a snide comment, because he would never let something happen to Stiles. This wasn’t just another supernatural hiccup though. The pack couldn’t just band together and scrape through this by the skin of their teeth. This was something that rocked their foundation.

“Can’t you tell us anything?” Jackson demanded.

“Yeah. I can tell you to get off your asses and get ready for a border run,” Derek shot back. Banter with Jackson was what he was used too, a touch of normal in a day that was far from it.

“I thought there was no danger,” Danny said, already standing.

“There isn’t,” Derek insisted and Allison pulled up onto her feet, standing at full height, “but we’re running anyway. We were scheduled for one. It’s just a day early. Ease the wolves,” she finished for him.

“Do the run,” Lydia said, and that made the decision for them, because if Lydia said check the border, you checked it, “something feels off. More than just this… thing that you won’t tell us about.”

“Lydia, if you say you feel like something’s coming again, I’m going to rearrange your wardrobe,” Erica groaned, trying to lighten the mood, “it was those god damn ghouls last time. I _cannot_ deal with that sludge again.”

Laughter twittered through the group, stopping when Lydia sighed.

“Oh,” Erica said, eyes widening, “shit. Really?”

“It’s not like what I’m used too, so I’m not sure. Normally it feels sort of like… a warning, like the way the temperature drops slightly before it rains. This isn’t like that. I don’t feel cold.”

“Well I’ll be the one who damns us all,” Allison offers, sheathing her knife in her boot, “what do you feel?”

Lydia shrugged, looking uncomfortable.

“If I had to pick a word? Like… thunder.”

“Thunder?”

“Yeah.”

Scott licked his lips, “not to be a downer, but thunder like the big, rolling boom, right before the lighting strikes?”

Lydia deflated with a heavy breath.

“Yes.”

Derek felt the eyes turn to him, looking to the closest thing they had to a leader at the moment for orders. Stiles had emotionally tapped out, left the ring, pulling into his room and his head to deal with his own new issues.

“Lydia, how long have you felt this?”

She considered it carefully, head tipping to the side, “two days, give or take? Sometimes the feelings pass in a few days, so I normally wait two or three days before bringing it up, and I was going to say something tomorrow if it was still hanging around.”

“Could it have something to do with James arriving today?”

“James?” Scott shot out before Lydia could respond, and there were flicks of interest from everyone in the room. Lydia ignored him, watching Derek carefully.

“I didn’t feel any change with his arrival. It could have been in anticipation of something associated with him, but… if it had to do with him, I would have felt a spike of some kind. A stronger rumble.”

Jackson grabbed his phone up off the coffee table and started for the door.  

“Just once I’d like to come back to visit this place and _not_ have to fight for my life,” he said, pulling on his jacket.

“Where are you going?” Derek demanded and Jackson rolled his eyes.

“To run the border. If something _is_ coming, I’m going to catch it before it fucks with my holiday plans,” Jackson held his arms open, “and you’re welcome to join me, oh Alpha,”

“I’m in,” Danny said, distracting Derek before he could snap back, and the other wolves started towards the door.

“I’m not,” Isaac said, and they paused, glancing back at him. He shrugged under the weight of their stares.

“Lydia might be wrong, no offence Lyds,” he added hastily, to which she shrugged – the supernatural was mighty unpredictable, “and I don’t want to chance it. I’m going to keep an eye on James.”

All the heads in the room swivelled back to Derek, who was watching Isaac carefully.

“Take Erica,” was all he said, and the other blonde jumped off the counter excitedly.

“Aw yeah, babe watch,” she said, and Isaac rolled his eyes.

“You don’t know what he looks like,” he argued and Erica shrugged.

“This is Beacon Hills Isaac. Everyone here is good-looking. It’s the supernatural in the air. We’re like an MTV show – all pretty and chiselled and look good with a little blood on our chins.”

“Ohhhkay now we know the wonder twins have things covered there,” Scott jumped in, drawing attention to him, “and the other wolves are out running, what do you want us humans to do? Stand around and do nothing? Again?”

“Wards,” Allison offered quickly, taking Scott’s hand, “you’ve been working on the healing and stuff with Deaton right? What about the wards?”

“That was always Stiles’ domain,” Scott said uncertainly, and Derek shook his head.

“Not anymore. We need to be able to protect ourselves when Stiles isn’t able too. You have to learn those wards. You could be all that stands between us and total destruction.”

“Dark man,” Danny snorted, moving to Jackson’s side while Scott’s eyes widened dramatically.

“We gonna run or not?” Jackson asked irritably and Derek nodded.

“Jackson, Danny, Boyd – You’re running. I want a full sweep, and we’ll go again tomorrow. Isaac and Erica – keep an eye on James. Don’t approach him,” he added with a glare at Erica’s excited grin, “and report back with any news. Scott, work on the wards, and Lydia I want you to help him out with that. If that feeling you have changes, I want to know immediately. Allison,”

“I’m going to meet with my dad and some other hunters. See if anything’s been reported nearby, or if anything spikes for them.”

Derek nodded, accepting quietly. Sometimes he forgot that as much as Allison was pack, she was the leader of her own family. She was an Alpha in her own right, in some ways, and Derek’s wolf could sense that at times like these, where she exercised her own authority.

“I’ll call Parrish and Melissa, I want eyes on the Sheriff as well,” he added, and some of the tension leaked out of Isaac’s shoulders at his words, “and I’ll stay here with Stiles and try to…”

“Get him to get over himself?” Jackson offers with only the smallest touch of snark, and Derek rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, that. Now get out of here, all of you.”

“Good talk,” Erica teased, her grin wide even if her eyes were worried, and the pack filed out as a group, pausing to hug him, or in Jackson’s case, brush against him just enough to be comforting without appearing too affectionate.

“And be careful!” Derek shouted at the last second as the door started to close, a very sudden fear gripping at his chest, the same fear he had when the ghouls came through town, or when hunters popped up, or when fey decided to make a mess.

His pack was in danger. He didn’t know what from, whether it was something that would tear them apart with claws or teeth or just from themselves, but they were.

Sucking in a deep breath Derek turned his head to the ceiling where he could already hear the rhythmic tapping of Stiles typing, already avoiding the issue.

This feeling wasn’t uncommon and that fucking sucked. Mostly because it felt a hell of a lot like they were going to war.

Again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lydia felt something,” Derek said, erasing the earlier conversation with a swipe of his finger across the screen, “and she filled us in when you decided to check out. And it turns out she might have been right. Danny picked up a scent up by the north-west corner that we don’t recognize,” he tipped his head up, meeting Stiles’ eyes, “we’ve got another rogue.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suck, because I have the attention span of a gnat and also I'm in my final year of university which is a touch more important than writing unfortunately. Please continue to yell at me for my lateness in the comments (which I will now go through and reply too in apology.)

The wall phone rattled loud in its holder when it rang, jolting the two older residence of the small home in their seats, pulling them out of their respective books.

“Who the hell is calling us this late?” Paul muttered, earning himself a light slap on the arm from the younger lady who pulled herself out of her armchair next to him, heading for the phone.

“It’s only eight thirty. You’re getting so old.”

“If it’s James, tell him he should call earlier,” Paul sniffed, only mildly insulted, drawing a laugh from his partner as she pulled the phone from the wall.

“Hello,” she offered on the tail end of her laugh, smiling into the receiver even though the other person couldn’t see.

“Hello, is this… Tabitha? Tabby Redford?”

“Speaking,” Tabby returned, her smile drooping slightly at the official tone on the line.

“This is Sherriff… uh. Sorry. It’s John. John Stilinski?”

All that Tabby could manage was a quiet, “oh,” which made Paul look up from his book, peering at her over the top of his glasses.

“I’m hoping… I wanted to talk.”

Tabby was silent for a second before remembering herself.

“About James,” she said, her heart sinking. It wasn’t like she didn’t know this day would come, but still, it caught her off guard. John sighed down the phone at her.

“Yeah Tabs. About James.”

\-----

Derek leaned against the doorway to the bedroom, staring a hole into the back of Stiles’ head.

“Your dad called,” he offered while Stiles’ clicked away, the statement acknowledged by a grunt.

“He’s coming around. Said to pour him a drink.”

Stiles continued to ignore him, but Derek caught the slip of Stiles’ fingers on the keys, the rapid backspace to cover the error.

“Obviously you’re planning on not talking about this.”

“I’m glad you noticed and respected my position,” Stiles said, the chipper tone adding a unique harshness to the words.

“You ignored the pack Stiles. They have questions, and they’re going to need answers.”

“God,” Stiles dropped his head back onto the rest of the office chair, “this is not a pack issue Derek. This is 100% an issue for me and not them. It is NONE of their business.”

Derek pushed himself off the doorframe, his mouth set to a firm line.

“Jesus, when did you stop trusting us?”

Stiles swivelled around in his chair, poised for the fight, the cold “ _Excuse_ me?” burning across the room when Derek’s phone beeped at him, pulling his attention away.

“Lydia felt something,” Derek said, erasing the earlier conversation with a swipe of his finger across the screen, “and she filled us in when you decided to check out. And it turns out she might have been right. Danny picked up a scent up by the north-west corner that we don’t recognize,” he tipped his head up, meeting Stiles’ eyes, “we’ve got another rogue.”

Stiles stared back incredulously, fingers tensed into balls before he threw his hands into the air.

“Of course we fucking do. Isaac can go and meet Danny an—“

“No he can’t,” Derek said, pulling a frustrated growl from Stiles.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because everyone already received their marching orders,” Derek snapped, “and they’re all out, following those orders.”

“Then _I’ll_ go to Danny,” Stiles started, only to be cut off again by Derek.

“You can’t. Your father just pulled up to talk to you.”

The flash of fear through Stiles’ eyes did not go unnoticed.

“This is more important,” Stiles argued, but Derek stood firm.

“If you don’t want the pack to be involved in this James thing, then fine, but you don’t get a choice about if your dad is involved – this is more about him than it is about you and he needs you. The pack will cover the rogue. You’re going to stay here and talk to him.”

“Like hell I am. James could _be_ the fucking rogue Derek, I need to be out there.”

Both of their heads turned when the door downstairs opened and John called out, letting them know he was there.

“Tonight you can work on your family,” Derek said, snatching his jacket off the bed, “I’ll go and work with the pack.”

“Oh for fucks… Derek!”

Stiles jogged after Derek, but wasn’t quite fast enough to catch him, instead finding his dad in the kitchen and the tail end of the front door clicking shut.

“Well at least you two are matched for dramatic flair,” John huffed, helping himself to Derek’s scotch. 

“Please, he learnt all his best moves from me,” Stiles retorted, still staring at the door. His dad cleared his throat, prompting Stiles to turn and focus his attention on the folder being waved at him. The light tan colour was easily recognizable.

“Here,” John said, the word more of a groan as he stretched over the bench to hand off the file.

“You think it’s real? He is?” Stiles asked, getting right into it, taking the file with him back to the table and letting it drop. Right on top was a photograph of the man from the police station, the self-claimed ‘James Redford’, wearing a dark blue gown, tasselled hat, and huge grin, holding a diploma and having the life squeezed out of him by an aging woman in a bright floral dress. For some reason Stiles wanted to tear the photograph into little shreds.

“It’s all real Stiles. I made a few calls on my way over.”

“Well, gee whizz Pop, I guess we better call him around for a game of catch,” Stiles let out sarcastically, the word leaving a bitter sting in his own chest.

“Stiles,” John warned and Stiles flailed around at the older man.

“A couple of phone calls, really? People lie Dad. How about some DNA tests? Or even Deaton, he probably could come up with some kind of truth serum or something. We don’t even know if he’s _actually_ human! Lydia thinks something funky is up, he could be that funk!”

Stiles froze, eyes going wide.

“Oh my god, he’s totally evil, that makes so much sense.”

“Stiles,” John sighed, “he’s not evil. And he _is_ human. I spoke to Tabby.”

“You called your summer fling from twenty four years ago?”

“Yes. From the phonebook as well, not using the number James gave me.”

Stiles’ stared at his dad, squinting incredulously before falling into a kitchen chair.

“And?”

“And, she confirmed everything. Even faxed over some extra stuff that James didn’t have. He… This is legit, Stiles.”

Stiles bit his lip, scanning over the paperwork in the file again.

“He’s evil,” Stiles announced, scraping the notes into a pile, “Lydia senses bad things and he just happens to show up? Not a coincidence.”

“Actually, that’s the definition of it.”

“Oh my god.”

“Correlation doesn’t equal causation Stiles, that’s your rule – whenever something supernatural rolls through town you tell the pack that just because it’s here doesn’t mean it’s bad. This is the same.” 

“Dad, I’ve been home for three days and I’ve already had to deal with rogue werewolves, a stressed out pack, and mystical warnings from a _banshee_ , but hey how’s about we just toss in a randomly appearing half sibling that nobody seems willing to question, or investigate, or find suspicious? No way that’s how this plays out. Have you seen our lives? It’s mayhem and fear and craziness! He’s _got_ to be evil, or at least being used by evil. The timing is too on point.”

“I’ve vetted him Stiles. He’s perfectly human and he’s normal, and Isaac already volunteered to play bodyguard, just in case. I’m not willing to jeopardise getting to know my son because you’re feeling paranoid.”

Stiles bristled, his hackles rising, and he could hear his tone turn spiteful, as if he was 12 again and angry at the world.

“Yeah, well, I’m not willing to jeopardise the safety of this pack and town on some weirdo matching smells, a phone call, and your gut instinct. And in case you forgot, I’m your son too, and my opinion has to count for something here.”

“Don’t twist my words kid. You’re being unreasonable.”

“I’m being unreasonable for being cautious? I’m trying to protect you!”

“Protect me from your own family?”

“HE ISN’T FAMILY!” Stiles shouted the warm glow of the kitchen lights flickering in response, reminding him to pull it in, to calm down. Stiles took a deep breath, undisguised anger still lining his tone, “You wanna call him blood, or something stupid like that then fine, believe that _all_ you want, but he isn’t family, not to us, and you know he isn’t! He hasn’t earned that.”

John stood, the drag of his chair against the floor screeching dangerously, and for once, Stiles’ let his mouth snap shut, forced closed by the suddenness of the move and the way his father’s face fell. He wasn’t angry, or even disappointed. Etched into worry lines and dipped in the bend of a frown was the weary face of defeat.

“Since when has being part of this family become something that is earned Stiles?”

He voiced the question like it was so simple – how was school, did you like dinner. Stiles wished he was angry, or upset or even freaking disappointed. His Dad asked like it was a fact, something that couldn’t be helped, like he couldn’t change anything.

“No, Dad, you don’t understand, it’s—“

“You’re damn right I don’t understand,” and there was only a touch of anger in his voice before it fleeted away, falling into a low tone of regret with a shake of John’s head, “I don’t understand what happened to you, and for once, I am going to talk and you’re going to listen and nothing else.”

John stood up straight, looking his son in the eye, and Stiles felt the whole world close into a fish bowl, the same way it had when he was nine and found out what the word dementia meant.

“The first time you brought Scott into this house you gave him half your lunch and told him he shouldn’t have to ask for food because he was your brother. When you came to me, begging me to investigate Mr. Lahey, you told me Isaac was pretty much family, that you helped family. You used to be the kid who we’d take to McDonald’s and you couldn’t leave the god damn playground without a new best friend who was going to come home with us. You don’t earn a place in this family Stiles, if you’re family then that’s it, you just are, no if’s, but’s, maybe’s, or supernatural conditions about it. So, not, I don’t understand. You’ve changed, kiddo. And you know what? You’re a good leader, a damn fine Alpha, and let’s face it, a brilliant soldier in this god damn war of a town when you need to be. But I’m not 100% I like what you’ve become as a human being,”

“Dad,”

“And I’m not 100% sure I like what you’ve become as my son either.”

Stiles’ wasn’t sure what his face looked like in that moment, but it was enough to make his Dad’s shoulders slump slightly.

“Sorry kiddo, I didn’t mean it like…,” John sighed, rubbing his eyes as he straightened up again, “actually I do. You’ve changed so much recently. You told me that you needed me to keep you sane once, to keep you human. And I haven’t. I just stood by and watched you become this… unrecognizable person. Life got hard and you got tough, and I was proud but kiddo, but it’s gone too far. You’ve stopped thinking of the pack as the family you made them and started thinking them as soldiers, and I don’t know how many battle scars need to be earned anymore before they pass your tests. You’re just a bunch of kids. You shouldn’t have to handle all this.”

“If I had known that this was going to be the result of you being involved in all of this supernatural stuff, that you’d forget how to trust people? I would have pulled you out. Somehow, someway, I would have. You suspect everyone, and everything, and only let a tight nit group of people close to you, and I wonder what happened to that annoying little shit who gave me so much trouble by trying to kidnap other kids in fast food restaurants. You used to have so much faith in everyone, even after...,” John paused, dampening his lips and looking up at the ceiling for a long deep breath before looking back at his son again, “I wonder where I went wrong.”

John moved away from the table, taking care to push the chair back in carefully and bracing himself against the back of it when it settled.

“I know why you’re concerned. I know, okay. Trust me when I say that I am very aware of why you are worried. And I get it, if I still know anything about you at all, then I know that it’s more than just the safety thing, and more than just the supernatural thing. It’s just been us for so long kiddo and I know that for a while it was us against the world and learning to change that has been hard for you. But unfortunately… this isn’t about you right now. It’s not just us against the world anymore. You broke past that already, with the pack. You have to let me do that too.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to meet with James, and we’re going to talk. We’re going to eat pancakes, or waffles, or eggs, and I’m going to have to get to know a complete stranger who I should have seen learning how to talk, and walk, and who I should know better than I know myself. I can’t live that, but I can hear about it, and if that’s as close as I can get I’m willing to take it. And I would love for you to join me. I’m not asking you to add him to the Christmas gift list right away Stiles, to fold him right into your inner circle and trust him like you do Scott. It’s just breakfast.”

“I want you to come with me tomorrow and try, really try, not to be an Alpha in this situation. I don’t want you thinking about him as an enemy, and I don’t want you thinking about him as a potential solider for you pack on the front line. Forget about that. I need you to be my son tomorrow, Stiles, just that and nothing else, if you can. As much as I want to know everything about this kid, from his first words to his last stupid mistake, I don’t want to walk out of that restaurant tomorrow knowing him more than I know you. I love you. A meal won’t change that.”

John moved away from the table, leaving Stiles where he sat, deathly quiet. He paused by the hallway door as the kitchen lights dimmed slowly without anyone touching the dials and turned his eyes skyward again, before turning around. Stiles’ was almost limp when John pulled him up from the chair into a crushing hug, but he was quick to return the favour, wrapping his arms tightly around his father and pulling tight. John waited until the light bulbs returned to normal brightness, bathing the kitchen in a warm light, to step away, letting Stiles take his time pulling his fingers from the fabric of John’s shirt.

“No matter what, you’ve got a lot of people who love you out there kiddo, and I’m first in line there. Don’t forget that.”

John headed out to the door again, somehow managing to feel heavier and lighter at the same time, when Stiles’ voice called quietly,

“Goodnight Dad.”

John half turned, slowing slightly to return the gesture, “night kiddo. Get some rest.”

“See you in the morning,” Stiles called before he got too far, like he was second guessing saying it at all, “for breakfast.”

John turned fully for that and nodded, getting a solemn nod in return, “I look forward to it.”

He heard the scrap of the kitchen chair as Stiles retook his seat, and John pulled the keys from his pocket and kept walking. There was nothing else he could add tonight. All he could do was hope that tomorrow, Stiles would come to breakfast. He passed Derek at the entrance of the building and just nodded to the younger man quietly and kept going. It was odd enough for Derek’s eyebrows to move complicatedly through a series of emotions before he looked up, as though he could see through the several feet of concrete to his apartment where Stiles was waiting and know that he was upset.

John got in his car and drove home without the radio on. Melissa was on shift when he reached the house, so he locked the door behind him carefully, turning on lights just to wander his way through the room and turn them off again on the other side. At the top of the stairs, he took a moment to pause at each of the photographs hanging along the wall, remembering, and wondering how things would have been different. How many of the photos on their wall should have a forth face in them? Would things have been the same, if Stiles had had someone older to help him when he was younger, when John had been too busy or too tired, when Claudia had been too sick? Their lives would be different – too different to even being imagining.

John kept going, pausing at the door that had been sitting ajar for months, more out of habit than out of necessity. Behind it was a musty single bed, and four walls covered in old posters. John didn’t bother turning on the light here. He settled himself on the end of the old mattress, scooping a forgotten book up from where it had found a new home on the ground under the bed, turning it over to where the cover glared “intermediate trigonometry” up at him. He looked at the walls, that hadn’t been redecorated in so long where they used to be ever changing and sighed heavily, closing his eyes. The house was quiet – from his position, he could just make out the hum of the hallway light, the twitch of the tree outside, and he found himself missing the obscure bumps, thumps, and cracks that would normally be near constant. After a moment, John stood again, leaving the book on the end of the bed, and moved across the hall, closing the door behind him with a little click. The boy who lived in that room didn’t exist anymore.

\------------

“You came back,” Stiles said quietly as soon as Derek stepped through the door. The older man slipped off his jacket, hanging it carefully on the hook, putting his keys in the bowl on the coffee table like he couldn’t scent the storm cloud of emotions rushing around Stiles’ spot.

“Couldn’t leave like that,” Derek moved a little closer, and Stiles just kept staring at where his hands were folded on the table.

“Everyone keeps yelling at me,” Stiles started, then stopped, frowning sharply. Derek took a seat in the chair across from the younger man, keeping his quiet until Stiles was ready to speak again.

“This isn’t how this weekend was supposed to go. I had it all worked out, and this was not how it was meant to go. I was meant to come home, and finish my report, and see the pack, and relax. We were meant to have sex. Like, a lot of sex,” Derek snorted, and Stiles looked up with a weak smile that wavered and fell away, “we were meant to go on our run. You were gonna ask me to marry you,” Derek’s eyes shot wide and Stiles shrugged slightly, licking his lips and blinking harder than normal, “and I was gonna pretend I hadn’t already found the ring, and the letters, and I was gonna say yes. We were meant to be so happy Derek. Now… everything is so fucked up.”

Stiles settled his head into his hands, “I just wanted one weekend,” he said, muffled by his hands, “one weekend without fighting, or problems, or… anything,” he lifted his head again, “you know what I wanted? A weekend with just human problems. No supernatural problems,” Stiles laughed, the sound harsh, before sniffing hard, “got a little more than I bargained for, huh?”

Stiles sighed heavily, slumping back in his chair.

“You’re right, you know. And he is too.”

“As much as I appreciate being right,” Derek said, smiling softly, “I’m gonna need you to remind me of what exactly I was right about.”

“I stopped,” Stiles waved his hand indistinctly, “ _trusting_ you guys. Not about Were things, or pack things, but somewhere along the line you guys stopped being my… support system. All I can ever think about is protecting you. All of you. And I think, I get so wound up in that…”

“You forget you can rely on us as well?”

Stiles let out all of his breath in a heavy gust.

“I really fucked this up, didn’t I?”

Derek shrugged, “A little. Luckily, you’ve got some time to come back from that. What you do next will fix it or break it.”

Stiles picked at the wood at the lip of the table.

“Since when did you become some kind of advice Yoda?”

“Since I fell in love with someone who has their head up their ass 90% of the time,” Derek joked.

“Ha, ha,” Stiles shot back sarcastically, tipping his head up to look at the ceiling.

“Am I building this up too much? The whole, James turning up at the same time as evil things? It’s not just a coincidence right?”

Derek laughed from his seat, prompting Stiles to look back at him.

“We’re pretty much a TV show Stiles. We get a monster through here every week. It doesn’t matter when this guy would have showed up, it would have been timed badly. We’re smart. We’ve learned from our mistakes. We won’t let him hurt us if he does turn out bad – but maybe,” Derek reached for the file still sitting in front of Stiles, spreading some of the papers aside again, laying evidence out, “he isn’t lying.”

“You know what the scary part is,” Stiles said, pulling one of the photos towards him, “I think I’ll be even worse at handling it if he isn’t lying.”

“Good thing you’ll have the whole pack behind you,” Derek offered, and Stiles rolled his eyes.

“God, we’re so fucking corny,” Stiles muttered, pushing forward in his seat to catch Derek in a kiss.

“Ugh, gross,” Jackson started from the doorway, catching them off guard and making them pull apart with a jolt, “this is worse than the Notebook.”

“Rude,” Stiles declared, reaching for Derek again. Jackson’s noises of protest made him pause.

“Did you forget or something? The new rogue? Scent? Caught? You know, the reason I’m actually here, instead of apparently to watch the love bird mate on the kitchen table? Call a pack meeting,” Jackson threw his hands in the air, wandering out of the room, the quiet, “idiot Alpha’s,” carrying back to them.

\--------

The pack was gathered in less than ten minutes, and Derek watched Stiles’ wide eyes and cheeky grin closely. He looked the way he should, like a complete and utter asshole, who’d put ice down your pants to watch you squirm, but he still smelt like he was lugging around a pile of rocks twice his weight.

“Right, so, fill me in,” he tossed out, crossing his arms across his chest and looking across at their patrol team.

“We herded him up by that café place in the middle of nowhere with the really shit burgers but really good fries,” Danny explained, drawing a horrified gasp out of Stiles.

“Why would you do that? What if he hurts the fryer? I love those fries!”

“Or the people,” Derek said, and Stiles snapped his fingers in agreement.

“Right, or the people. But, the fries!”

“He was heading that way, we just followed and kept him out of populated areas,” Danny shrugged, regaining attention, “the bookshop that closed two weeks ago is still empty – we’re trying to get him in there for some isolation, and it’s late enough that the diner should be closing anyway. Boyd is making a mess there right now to lead him there. Plus there is an alley conveniently located behind it to draw him in. You know rogues, they can’t resist a good creepy alley way.”

“God bless the infinite sketchy alley ways in this town,” Stiles sighed happily, then paused, frowning, “add that to the list of sentences I never thought I’d say. Sounds like we’re gonna make a mess. Derek?”

“Parrish will collect and bounce calls. Vandals?”

“What? Fuck no. People keep seeing my jeep, putting two and two together, and assuming I’m some kind of Banksy wannabe when you say vandalism. Pick something cool, for my street cred. Like… a drug bust.”

“Vandals it is.”

“Rude,” Stiles shot, affronted, before slapping his palms together and rubbing them, “okay team, plan of action – Jackson, Danny, you’ll go with me and Barbra,”

“Stop naming the bats, Stiles,”

“To help Boyd,” Stiles continued, like Derek hadn’t interrupted him at all, “Erica, Isaac, Derek, I want to make sure nothing else slips through the cracks. Take Lydia and Alison and re-ward, re-trap, re… whatever you need to do. Secure the border,” he pointed a finger at Derek, making eye-contact to prove that he was serious beneath the bubby exterior, “nobody crosses that line without us knowing about, supernatural or otherwise. Scott, I want you medical standby. I don’t anticipate a mess, but you never know in these situations. Everyone got it,” he asked, pausing to check that everyone nodded or signalled their agreement, before reaching for his bat on the coffee table, “right. Break!”

The pack broke off into their assigned groups with quick exchanges, touches of luck, tiny wordless reminders to stay safe. Derek pulled Stiles aside and pressed a kiss to his temple, whispering something in his ear that the rest of the pack politely ignored, and giving Stiles a strong, firm look.

“I love you too, moron,” Stiles muttered, ducking his head and shuffling his shoe slightly so that it kicked against Derek’s.

“Prove it and come home,” Derek returned, earning a heavy punch in the shoulder, before being pulled in for a hug.

“Your relationship is so weird,” Erica observed, spurring the border run group into leaving when Stiles opened his mouth and replied with, “you should see it in the bedr--” before Derek’s hand clamped over it.

Derek gave him another firm look before releasing Stiles mouth, only to catch it again in a kiss that was broken by the sounds of Scott gagging.

“Can we go please?” Jackson whined, “I need to throw up before we get to the bookshop.”

Derek levelled a glare at the blond, who stared back, unimpressed, before begrudgingly releasing his boyfriend and walking out without a backwards glance.

“I still don’t know how you scored that much perfect in one person,” Danny sighed, tilting his head slightly as Derek walked.

“Black magic,” Stiles chirped, heaving the bat up onto his shoulder, “Alright. Autobots, roll out!”

\---------

After spending a few hours alone in his hotel room, borderline hyperventilating about having finally met his dad and how much of an idiot he had been for not doing at least a little bit of research into his father’s past, James headed out to dinner, picking a random food stop a few blocks from his motel. After ordering, Isaac from the records department walked in and forced James to remember that this town was indeed very small, followed by either his date, or his sister. Either way, the girl he was with stared at James more than Isaac, prompting the older man to hide behind his menu until his food arrived.

She looked just about ready to get up and pounce when James’ phone started ringing, literally saving him by the bell.

“Hello?”

“James Daniel Redford,” trilled shrilly down the line at him, making him wince.

“Hi Ma,” he sighed, sullenly pushing a chip into the ketchup on his plate. The jig was up – she knew.

“Don’t you ‘Hi Ma’ me. You said that you were going to take a gap year to travel across the country, and, I quote, ‘find yourself.’ At what point did finding yourself become finding you father?! And why, why, _why_ , didn’t you tell me!”

“Mama, please, I didn’t… this wasn’t meant to hurt you or make you upset. That’s why I didn’t tell you. And I thought it actually would take a year – how was I supposed to know he’d still be in the same town that you met him in? I thought it would be this epic adventure chasing a ghost story across the country and instead I got…” James sighed, stabbing his sauce again.

“Aw honey,” Tabby said, and James could hear her shaking her head, “he’s not what you expected?”

“I don’t know Ma. I haven’t really gotten a chance to speak to him,” James admitted, “we’re having breakfast tomorrow but… Ma, he has another kid. Another son.”

“Baby, you knew that was a possibility.”

“I know but, it’s like… the guy already hates me. You should have seen his face. And John barely even remembered you! I had to remind him, and we barely spoke for like ten minutes and… it just… wasn’t what I expected,” James leant back in his booth, rubbing his face, “I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. I didn’t expect to be hated already.”

“I’m so sorry Jamie baby. John… well, the John I knew was a wonderful man, smart and kind. I don’t think the world will have changed him that much. When I spoke to him,”

“You spoke to him?”

“How else do you think I found out dummy? He called.”

“Oh,” James let out, sighing again.

“Anyway, he said he wanted to know you. He’ll give it a shot. His other son might take a little bit of winning around. Give it time.”

James crinkled his nose down at his food, looking up as Isaac dragged his date and/or sister from the restaurant while whispering to her in hushed tones.

“I’m gonna go wallow in my disappointment and eat my dinner now,” James offered, “I’m not really in the mood to chat.”

“Alright baby. You enjoy your food. I’ll call you tomorrow night?”

“Yeah okay  Ma. Talk tomorrow.”

“Love you hon!”

“Love you too Ma. Be safe.”

James let his phone drop to the table, and pulled a notebook out of his messenger bag, flipping to the page of questions he had jotted down to ask his father when he met them. Some of them had been on the list for years, moving from notebook to notebook. Now, however, he had some new questions.

Digging for a pen, James clicked the end a couple of times, tapping it on the page before adding to the bottom of his list, “Why is he called Stiles?”

\--------------

It was a while before James finally left the restaurant, the world outside well and truly dark and the waitress tossing him sad looks with every coffee refill. He left a $20 tip on his $19.50 bill, mostly because he was sure he made them stay open later than normal, packed up his stuff, and headed out into the darkness.

He was only a block or so away from his temporary home when a howl pierced the dark. James ducked instinctively behind a car, thinking he had been shot at, or that someone was being murdered. It was loud enough that it nearly shattered the thin glass of the building beside him, making it shake in its frame. It took a second for James to realize that it came from _inside_ the building. Pulling himself up on the door frame of the battered blue jeep that had been his temporary cover, he inched toward the building, peering through a gap in the newspaper covered windows.

It was too dark to see much in the room, just blurred shapes and flickers of coloured lights, specks of blue and yellow blinking in and out. It seemed like a pretty odd place to have a rave, and a pretty odd style too without music, but kids had to make their fun somewhere in a small town. Maybe it was a murder mystery game?

The room lit up behind the paper, James recoiling at the sudden brightness before braving his peep hole again.

“What the…” James recognized those kids – the two boys from the police station who had followed him, or rather Stiles, into the office only to be sent away. They had a third with them whom James didn’t recognize, all of them sporting some pretty intense special effects makeup for a bunch of teens hanging around in a dark room. The weirdest part, however, was the fourth guy, who was crouched by the wall in clothing that looked older than he did, eyes lit up in a bright blue.

“Alllrriiiggghhhhtttt,” was that, “why don’t we all calm down a little, eh?” fuck that was,

“Stiles,” James said quietly, eyebrows crinkling as the teen entered the room, sporting a metal bat on one shoulder. He had a nasty cut over one cheek, a fresh wound if the blood seeping down was any indication, and he looked, for lack of a better word, _pissed._

The atmosphere in the room changed like a sudden cold snap, the three teens standing straighter while the crouching boy sunk lower on his hunches. James could hear the steady hum of what he assumed was a generator, growling away in the new silence, growing while Stiles walked closer. If he didn’t know better, James would say it was coming from the kid in the corner.

“I gotta say,” Stiles drawled, eyes fixed on the crouching boy as he strode forward, the intensity of his gaze making James shiver despite the warmth of the evening, “when I came home for the holidays, I was planning on sneaking beer without my dad noticing and finally get my hands on Boyd’s PS4. You’re interrupting my plans.”

The crouching boy flexed his hands, eyes darting around the room like the cornered animal he was, and James noticed for the first time the dangerously sharp nails on the kid. Stiles clicked his tongue like a scolding parent and the blue eyes refastened on him.

Stiles stopped right in front of the boy, crouching in front of him with the bat resting across his knees, elbows sitting on top of it so that his hands hung down in the space between his legs. He wasn’t in a position to quickly defend himself anymore, and he let the kid know it. Stiles’ voice was soft when he spoke again, calmer, less angry, a warm caress in the cold room.

“You’re trespassing,” he said, “and you’re very, very aware of that.  Which puts me in a lil bit of a pickle, cuz, see, I’m well within my rights to bury this bat,” his hand came up to trace the silver of the bat, “in your cranium and let these guys,” Stiles’ flicked his thumb over his shoulder at the three teens, one of whom snarled like the special effect make up wasn’t fake, “make it look like you were already in pieces before you hit our border. And I have two whole seasons of Parks and Recs to get back to, so you’ll understand why I’m eager to wrap this up quickly. Keeping that in mind, how about you just tell me what brings you through town and I’ll think about letting you walk out of here with all your limbs?”

James clung to the window seal, staring with wide eyes.

Was his new little brother the leader of a serial killer ring?

“I can’t,” the kid spat like he was having trouble around all the fake teeth in his mouth.

Shit, was this a cult thing?

Was Stiles the leader of a cult?

“Who told you that?” Stiles asked, his head tipping to the side.

“I,” the kid tried again, and honestly, just speaking looked more painful than anything Stiles had threatened, “I’m not.”

Even from his position by the window James could see the kid shivering as he flipped his head from side to side, and even from his spot James could tell the moment he decided to launch himself forward with his all of his fake but sharp teeth and razor nails. James’ cry of horror was caught in his throat as the kid crashed into Stiles, who barely moved under the force of the battering, instead catching the boy in what, if James hadn’t just seen him jump, would appear to be a hug.

That was until Stiles’ pushed the boy off of him, and James saw blood. The younger boy fell back onto the hardwood floor, hands flying to a quickly reddening patch on his side, the sharp of his nails suddenly missing and his eyes settling into a muddy brown. He looked so much younger and scared now. James watched with absolute terror as Stiles wiped a bloody knife on his jeans and tucked it back into a holder by his ankle with the hand not holding the bat.

“It’s not healing,” the kid gasped, ripping at the already shredded fabric of his shirt.

“That’s cuz of a lil thing called wolvesbane. It’s poison for you guys,” Stiles said just as calmly as before, standing up to stare down at where the boy was now laying in his own blood, “and I’ll cure it. If you tell me what I need to know.”

“I can’t! My Alpha, he, I can’t,”

The poor kid was actually crying now, the deep, wet kind of sob that clawed at James’ chest.

“You’re not an omega?”

Whatever an omega was, the kid vehemently declared he wasn’t one with a vigorous shake of his head.

“And you were ordered not to tell us anything.”

This was met with a nod, and another chest-heaving sob as the kid tried to add pressure to his wound.

“Well then, that’s an easy fix,” Stiles said, his voice turning chipper, and he stepped over the kid, staring down at him, “Dad was just saying I need to ‘let more people in’. Submit.”

The surprise was evident at this.

“What?”

“Submit. If I’m your Alpha, he won’t have any influence over you. Then I can heal you up, get you help.”

“It doesn’t… it’s not that easy. Can’t be.”

“You don’t know that. Submit.”

“It won’t work,” the boy coughed, “it won’t.”

“It will,” Stiles sounded so confident, so sure of himself that there was no room for argument, pressing the end of the bat against the boy’s chin – it wasn’t a threat, even James could see that, instead a gentle encouragement, but it still spoke volumes about just who was in charge, “I promise you. It will.”

With just the barest hint of pressure from the bat, the boy lifted his chin back, his eyes flashing the bright blue from before, and the effect was instant -- Stiles tossed the bat away, dropping to his knees beside the kid and rummaging through his pockets in near panic. The three others all pressed closer, their elaborate special effect makeup missing and instead replaced with matching expressions of concern. They surrounded the boy so that James could barely make out what was happening, all of them reaching out to touch somehow. There was a small flash of purple between the limbs that now all seemed to be touching, followed by a howl of pain. The kid kicked out, catching the taller blond in the knee, but he took it with a grunt, not moving from his spot.

James held his breath in anticipation, his ears straining, tensely waiting for what would happen next. He wasn’t expecting to hear quiet sobs, along with the soft sound of Stiles’ soothing them.

“It’s okay,” Stiles was repeating over and over, and if James squinted he could just barely make out that the younger boy was clinging to Stiles’ chest, bawling into his t-shirt, “I’m sorry, I had to, I’m so sorry, it’ll okay now, it’s okay.”

“Stiles,” either Danny or Boyd interrupted, James couldn’t remember which was which from their very brief meeting, “we have to get him home. To Derek’s?”

Stiles’ nodded, and with some help from the blond, who had been kicked, lifted the boy up.

“Can you walk,” he asked quietly, before adding “I’ll hold onto you,” as a kind of reassurance at whatever appeared on the boy’s face in response to that.

“Excellent. Come on,” Stiles directed the boy from the room, keeping his arm tight around the kid’s waist, with the blond close on the other side just in case, “let’s get you home, huh? What’s your name?”

“Liam,” the boy offered shakily, and that was the last of the conversation that James caught before they vanished out of the room. Boyd and Danny remained behind, one reaching for the bat.

“Never seen him stab someone just for some information before,” who James thought was Danny said quietly, while Boyd rolled the bat between his palms, “and then solve a problem by adding them to the pack?”

“I know,” Boyd said, passing off the bat as they also went to leave, flicking the lights off and sending the room into darkness once more, “I’ll speak to Derek.”

James heard the door in the alleyway beside the shop crash open, scrambling away from the wall and darting down a few buildings to duck behind a car. He watched as Stiles, Liam, and the other boy maneuverer out to the blue jeep James had hidden behind earlier. Stiles tossed the keys back at the other two boys without looking, crawling into the tiny back seat space of the jeep.

Settling himself in the gutter, James leaned back against the tires of the car he was hiding behind, listening to the sound of the old jeep stutter to life and gun away from the curb, leaving the street in an eerie silence and James with more questions than he’d ever had in his notebooks.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you see the plot thickening? CAN YOU?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He’s already ours,” Jackson said, unable to hide the defensiveness in his voice, “Stiles already pulled him in. Besides, what else are you going to do? Kill him?”
> 
> From the corner, Boyd let out a low snarl, making everyone jump. He looked surprised at himself.
> 
> “Sorry,” he offered quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha this is so late that it's not even funny how late it is and I'm super sorry. I have a busy, busy life and also, I do commissions, so I sort of have to write for the people that pay me before writing for fun. Also I have not checked this chapter for errors AT ALL, because it's nearly midnight and I have to get up at like, 4am, so please, if you see an error message me so that I can correct it (I'll do a proper sweep tomorrow.) You may want to re-read the previous chapters before this one. I had to do that before I wrote it.

“We’re in, and then we’re out, and then we’re called back in, and then we’re sent back out again,”

“Erica,”

“Hey, just maybe next time we can wait like… ten minutes before being sent right to the edge of town only to be called back again! Just saying!”

“Quit complaining, nobody else is complaining,” Derek shot back, and Erica crossed her arms over her chest in the passenger seat, nose wrinkled up.

“Actually,” Alison pipes up from the back seat, “there _is_ a lot of back and forth.”

“We’d be more effective with less travel time,” Lydia adds without looking up from where she was scribbling in her notebook beside Alison, “Erica has a point.”

Erica waved her hand proudly at the back seat.

Derek turned his eyes on Isaac, raising an eyebrow at him through the rearview mirror.

“Do you agree with this?”

The three girls all paused, turning to look at their second in charge, Erica turning bodily in her seat. Isaac shrugged.

“They have a point,” Isaac started, “ _but_ ,” continued over Erica’s triumphant ‘ha!’, “there is no way of predicting that we’d have head back so soon. Regardless of what happened with them, our instructions to secure the border should have remained the same. The change indicates some kind of emergency.”

The mood in the car sobered quickly, silly arguments forgotten as they were reminded of just why they were driving back into town.

“That pain ended too quickly to be any kind of serious damage though,” Erica argued, making Derek’s jaw set tightly. They’d all felt the sudden flair up of pain just under their ribs shortly before Stiles sent out his SOS come home message. It grated Derek that he hadn’t recognized who it had been – normally, he could always tell who had been hurt, recognising the way that each pack member felt their pain.

Not being able to recognize whose pain he was feeling didn’t sit right with him.

“We still got called back,” Alison said, fiddling with her bow, “so even if it isn’t a serious injury, it’s serious business.”

Lydia put her pen down, reaching for her phone.

“Jackson says to hurry up,” she offers, clicking out a quick reply, “whatever it is has him wound up tight.”

Derek pushed the car into sixth gear, tearing down the street fast enough to make Isaac grab the doorhandle.

“Tell him we’ll be there soon.”

\------

“Good, you’re here,” were the first words out of Stiles’ mouth when they rushed through the front door, his right cheek covered in a thick brown sludge that Scott used to speed human healing. The closer they had gotten to the building, the stronger the level of distress coming from it had been. It crawled up Derek’s spine, clearly not his own but still his responsibility.

“I don’t know what’s happening, but he stopped responding to me.”

They followed Stiles through the lounge to the guest bedroom where the rest of the pack was crowded.

“Don’t get too close,” Scott warned as they came through. He was the closest to the bed, eyes locked on its occupants, smoke drifting up from a tied bundle of herbs in his hand. Derek recognized the mixture, his nerves settling as the smoke drifted around him – normally Scott only cracked it out for particularly bad full moons. There was wolvesbane in it, not enough to injure, but, with the right combination of other herbs, enough to make them placid.

“What the hell,” Erica voiced the words on everyone’s minds.

Jackson was resting on the bed with a shaking lump settled on his chest. That was the best way to describe it. Derek could see tuffs of blond hair sticking out of the blanket, a clawed foot poking out the other end, and he immediately knew that this was the source of the distress he’d been feeling.

The boy under the covers was pack.  

“I don’t know what happened,” Stiles said in a low tone, and the blanketed boy growled softly until Jackson ran a hand over the back of his neck, calming him, “one second he was fine, responding well, answering questions, and then the next he just… spazzed up. I can’t get near him. Everyone else can, but he likes Jackson the best so…” Stiles trailed off with a wince while Jackson glared at him, shrugging.

“Explain what happened,” Derek said, and Stiles scrunched up his noise at the anger there.

“He’s not a rogue, he’s an omega,” Danny answered instead, because Stiles looked like he didn’t know where to begin, “and his Alpha ordered him not to answer questions.”

Derek took a moment to let that tick over in his mind.

“So basically,” he said slowly, “his Alpha sent him here to kill us or die trying.”

“Yeah, but I saved him,” Stiles said quickly, earning another growl out of the boy.

“You took over didn’t you,” Derek said flatly, “you got him to submit, overrode the other Alpha’s authority.”

Stiles winced again.

“For a good reason?”

“Then he spazzed out,” Danny continued, before an argument could erupt right there in the middle of the room, “and it was like, the other Alpha took him back or something.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Derek frowned, “authority is tricky – we can’t just swap back from a distance like that,” he stared at the lump for a long moment before his eyes widened.

“He has more than one Alpha,” Derek announced, the pack immediately raising questions all at once. Derek held up a hand to quiet them.

“One at a time,” he said.

“Why do you think that? And how is it possible?” Isaac asked.

“Because we have it,” Lydia answered, drawing all eyes to her. She, however, was looking at the boy on the bed.

“If any of the wolves in our pack submitted to another Alpha, they wouldn’t leave this pack,” Derek explained, “because we have more than one Alpha. You would no longer see me as an authority, but Stiles would still be your Alpha in your eyes.”

“So basically,” Jackson voices from the bed, his voice a softness that only a privileged few had heard, “Stiles over took one Alpha’s authority, but there is a second Alpha who gave him the exact same answer-no-questions command?”

“And he’s reacting – he wants to obey Stiles, but he can’t, because the other Alpha commanded him not too.”

“Derek,” Lydia said quietly, stepping forward, “you do it.”

“What?”

“Get him to submit. You’ll overrun the second Alpha.”

“You guys are aware that this means that you’ll have a new pack member, right?” Derek said quietly, looking around the pack carefully.

“He’s already ours,” Jackson said, unable to hide the defensiveness in his voice, “Stiles already pulled him in. Besides, what else are you going to do? Kill him?”

From the corner, Boyd let out a low snarl, making everyone jump. He looked surprised at himself.

“Sorry,” he offered quickly.

“I won’t hurt him,” Derek said, raising his hands up defensively as he stepped forward, “I promise.”

Jackson’s grip tightened slightly on the back of the younger boy’s neck, “yeah well. You better not.”

“I can’t do anything if he’s hiding in a blanket Jax,” Derek said quietly, using the nickname typically forbidden for anyone except Danny and Lydia.

Jackson sighed like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and tipped his head forward.

“Liam,” he coaxed, “you need to come out.”

“No,” came the stubborn reply, and the pack snickered at Derek’s groan.

“Another stubborn one? Really Stiles?”

“At this point it’s a pack requirement,” Stiles joked, but it fell flat when Liam hissed under the blanket.

“Stiles, you’ll have to leave for this,” Derek decided, and Stiles made a wounded noise.

“Isaac,” Derek said quietly, turning his attention back to Liam so that he wouldn’t have to watch Isaac pull Stiles from the room. The effect was instantaneous – Liam stopped shaking and pulled the blanket down lightly, revealing a dirty, tear-streaked face. He could have been Jackson’s brother, they looked so similar. He whined, pushing himself closer to Jackson.

“No,” he said again, quieter, staring at the door like he could see through it and ignoring everyone else.

 “He wants Stiles back,” Jackson explained at the confused looks on most of the pack’s faces, “it’s a real bitch. When Stiles leaves, it upsets him. When he’s here, it upsets him. Hurry up and fix it will you?”

Derek stepped closer, putting his hand lightly on Scott’s shoulder to get him to move a little bit back from the bed before moving into Liam’s line of sight. The younger man’s eyes snapped onto him and his upper lip pulled back in a silent snarl that looked very odd on his human face. Liam’s eyes flashed bright blue, and Derek’s returned the favour in red, making Liam’s chest rumble deeply.

“You want to be with your Alpha,” Derek said quietly, stepping closer again until he was right at the edge of the bed, “but you’re not allowed, are you?”

Liam’s growl stammered a little.

“I can make it better.”

The growl stopped entirely.

“How?” The voice sounded older than Derek expected, oddly gravelly.

“Join our pack completely. Submit to me.”

 “He said that too,” Liam argued, the words harsh, “he said it would be okay and it isn’t. I told him, it’s not that easy.”

“We didn’t know you had two Alphas when that happened,” Derek said calmly, “we know that now. We can make things better.”

Liam chewed his lip, Jackson’s arm tightening around him.

“I won’t let anything bad happen to you,” Jackson offered Liam quietly, “Derek won’t hurt you. We’re pack.”

“Pack always hurt each other,” Liam said, and Derek balked, the pack bristling around him, “builds strength. Makes better soldiers.”

“That’s not true, a pack is a family,” Jackson argues before Derek can speak up, “we fight together, for each other, not against each other.”

Liam looks away from Derek for the first time, scanning the pack in the room, before settling back on Derek.

“You’d fight for me? You don’t know me.”

“I know you’re park of our pack,” Derek replies, “and that’s enough for me. We’ll get to know you.”

Liam scrunches his nose up, like he didn’t believe Derek at all, and Jackson soothed his hand up and down Liam’s back.

“We can at least try to fix it,” Jackson offered, “but this is the only way we know how.”

“This is the same as before right, with Stiles right? You don’t need to bite me or anything like my other Alphas did?”

“They _bit_ you?” Alison piped up from behind them.

“Y-yeah?” Liam replied, confused.

“Submitting has to be willing to pass the torch from Alpha to Alpha. After you submit, that’s it – you don’t have to do anything else. Biting you was unnecessary, it’s only needed for the change,” Derek explained, keeping his anger reigned in. He could see Boyd shuffling forward slightly out the corner of his eye. For the quietest pack member, he was the most sensitive and aware.

“So what, I just…”

Derek shrugged nonchalantly.

“Submit. Bare your throat.”

Liam frowned back at Derek, and then sat up more, letting the blanket fall away more. He let out a heavy breath, his eyes dark and serious as he tipped his head to the side. Derek let his eyes flash red, and Liam’s flashed back a brilliant blue at him in return.

The tension in the room snapped like a rubber band and outside the room there was a crashing noise before the door burst open and Stiles rushed through, Isaac close on his heels.

“I felt it, it worked right?” Stiles asked desperately, his voice set high and on edge.

Liam slumped back against Jackson’s chest, sighing tiredly.

“How do you feel?” Derek asked him, maintaining eye contact.

“Better,” Liam said gently, his voice much softer now, “like I’m not being stretched anymore.”

Derek pushed himself off the bed, stepping back and frowning at Liam. Around him, the pack rippled, torn between wanting to comfort their new pack member and crossing a line with their Alpha.

“You need to get some rest,” Stiles voiced, the only one brave, or stupid, enough to do so, “but before you do I just need to ask a few questions.”

The attention shifted to Stiles as Liam nodded.

“The pack you came from. How many were there?”

“Five, six if I was included.”

“And how many were Alphas?”

“All of them,” Liam said.

Stiles words strangled in his throat.

“All of them,” he choked out.

Liam glanced at the other betas, “aren’t you all Alphas?”

“No,” Derek said after a moment of silence, Stiles eyes having developed a funny glassy look, “these Alphas, was there one who was above the rest?”

“Yeah, there was one, but I didn’t meet him. Sometimes I’d hear him speak in the other room, and I could feel it. And the others talked about him differently.”

“Okay,” Stiles announced, like a whip crack, “I think it’s time for Liam to get some sleep so that we can talk more in the morning. How’s about everyone goes and grabs something for the bed?”

The order to get out was implied, but it was followed all the same, betas and humans alike passing Stiles calculating looks as they exited, until Jackson was the only beta still inside.

“I’m gonna stay, in case the other pack has a change of heart,” Jackson said. Jackson was stubborn in his own right, and he and Stiles butted heads enough for both Alphas to know that a fight over this would come up empty.

“Agreed,” Stiles said with a nod, “if that’s okay with Liam.”

The younger man seemed bewildered by the question but he nodded.

“Jackson will show you where the bathroom is so that you can have a shower and clean up,” Stiles continued, “and we’ll get you some clothes to change into. When you get back the bed will probably have a lot of different scents in it; don’t be too worried. The pack is each going to put something, probably clothing, in the bed so that you can adjust to our scents,” Stiles reached up, tugging his shirt off over his head, leaving his hair spiky and out of control. He tossed the shirt at Jackson.

“Wack that and Derek’s under the pillow,” he ordered before returning his attention to Liam, “our scents will be stronger because we’re Alphas, and it’s good for you to learn them faster.”

Beside him, Derek tugged his own shirt off, giving it a light sniff before tossing it over.

“It’s mostly clean,” he added as Jackson caught it with a wrinkled nose. A knock on the doorframe signalled the return of the pack and Stiles glanced over at the closed door.

“We’ll let you get cleaned up and get some rests. Jackson will answer any question you have as best he can but, take some of his stories with a grain of salt. He can be a bitter sore-loser,”

“Hey!”

“But if you hear anything, if you feel anything. Alert _everyone._ Jackson will protect you, but it’s our job to protect the both of you.”

He made sure to hold Liam’s gaze to impress the importance of his words before nodding, and glancing at Derek.

“See you in the morning Liam,” Stiles said, jerking his head towards the door when Derek looked his way.

“Try and get some rest,” Derek said, squeezing Liam’s shoulder as he followed Stiles out of the room.

The pack was piled up outside the door, clutching an array of items from t-shirts to stuffed animals.

“Be quick, he needs his rest. War meeting in an hour,” Stiles commands as Derek shoulders past him, heading for the stairs, “I’m pretty sure I need to be yelled at first,” he admits, wincing as the door to their bedroom slams shut loud enough to make the wolves twitch.

“If you don’t survive, I want your computer,” Scott voices, and Stiles slaps him as he heads past the group to the bedroom.

Derek was sitting on the bed when he walked in, fingers laced together on his knees, staring at his nail beds. Stiles closed the door quietly behind himself, his shoulders hunched, and his eyes downcast.

“It was my only choice,” he said quietly and though it sounded loud in the room, Derek didn’t make any sign he’d heard.

“I thought they had sent him here for us to _slaughter,_ Der,” Stiles continued, keeping his voice as diplomatic as possible, “or for him to take as many of us out as he could. I saw a way for it to end without blood, and I just took it. It wasn’t fair to you, it wasn’t considerate to the pack, and for those things, I am so, so, unbelievably sorry. But it was smart. I did what needed to be done.”

Derek lifted his hands, rubbing his face, before turning to look at Stiles.

“I know,” he said, and he sounded tired again, like he was on the down side of forty, “I know.”

“But you’re still mad,” Stiles stated.

“Not at you. Or Liam,” he added, pushing himself off the bed, “I’m angry at this situation. For months, hell for _years,_ we’ve been dealing with shit thing after shit thing, and we never get to catch a break, and now we find out that there’s a chance all of that was could have been _planned?_ Set up by some kind of… Alpha pack? Why would they do that?”

“For the same reason they sent us Liam. They’re testing us,” Stiles said, and Derek frowned at him.

“What do you mean?”

“Liam said the whole pack were Alphas, right,” Stiles started, crossing his arms across his chest, “so why would you have a whole pack of Alphas, but only put your Omega under the control of _two_ of them?”

“Two could be the limit,” Derek suggested watching Stiles’ mind tick, “we know it works for two Alphas because that’s how many we have. It’s possible that wolves can respond to a maximum of two Alphas in case of an Alpha pair? That was Deaton’s theory for our pack. I mean, we over took his old Alphas. We could have just _added_ to his Alpha-number when he submitted to us if it was possible too, but instead we kicked them out.”

“Possible,” Stiles conceded, “but we have to assume this was more than that. Even if that is true, don’t think of this as a coincidence.”

“What do you think it is,” Derek asked, to save Stiles from rambling until Derek stumbled across what Stiles was thinking.

“I have a theory,” Stiles started, and he started pacing as he spoke, “so you’re part of this ultra-powerful Alpha pack and you start hearing rumours of a human Alpha down in bumbfuck California. So you go and visit, and you see that there are two Alphas, one human and one wolf and you think to yourself, there’s no way that kid is a real Alpha. Must just be the wolf with the actual wolf-whammie powers, right? So what do you do to test if the little human has his own alpha abilities?”

Derek groaned as he followed Stiles train of thought.

“You send an Omega with two Alphas into their den and wait to see if _both_ authorities get over-ridden,” Derek finished, and Stiles snaps his fingers excitedly.

“Exactly.”

“So all these things that have been happening? The fae? The witches? The _ghouls?_ ”

“All very gross, very time consuming, and all probably tests. They have probably been studying us for months.”

“This seems very paranoid,” Derek admitted, “which is unfortunately our life now.”

“Der, we have to assume that Liam is more than just a test of my alpha abilities,” Stiles said, and Derek nodded soberly.

“I know.”

Stiles tipped his head back to murmur curse words at the universe before looking back to Derek.

“How’s your cheek,” Derek asked, nodding to where Stiles cheek was still covered in a brownish gloop. Stiles reached up like he had forgotten it was there, which, considering the frequency in which he had the stuff on his body, may actually have happened.

“A little itchy,” Stiles admitted, letting Derek step into his space, sliding his hands up and down Stiles’ arms.

“It’ll be okay,” Derek said confidently, “we’ll be okay.”

“I hope so Der,” Stiles conceded, “because I’m really worried about this one.”

Under them, the pack had gathered together and was chatting amongst themselves – their chatter had become an argument, and Derek’s head twitched in their direction.

“Time to inform the kids,” Derek said, nodding at the floor, “they’re getting restless.”

“I really thought I’d get to enjoy my holiday,” Stiles muttered, as he moved to grab himself a new shirt.

\-----------

By the time they were done talking to the pack, the sun was rising slowly, lighting the room in a soft glow.

“I think that means it’s bed time,” Stiles suggested when Scott’s phone alarm began blaring to warn him it was six am and time to get up for work.

“Yeah, for some,” Scott grumbled, fiddling with his alarm, “I have to go to work still.”

“As do I,” Derek murmured and Stiles gave a short whine at the thought of having to dislodge himself from where he was lounging on Derek’s chest.

“Okay. Bed for some,” Stiles corrects, sitting up and stretching with a yawn.

“Not you,” Derek reminds him softly as the rest of the pack slowly begun to stand and stretch, quietly discussing plans for the day.

“Stupid breakfast,” Stiles complained, scratching at his eyes and glancing at the Spider-Man clock that always hung slightly crooked on the lounge room wall.

“You can’t skip out,” Derek insisted, and Stile scrunched up his nose at him, reaching up to scratch at the sludge that had dried completely against his skin.

“Fuck,” Stiles groaned, before pushing himself up to his feet, “better go shower.”

Derek shot up behind him, catching him around his waist,

“I’ll join you,” he breathed into Stiles’ ear.

“Gross,” Scott called, but he was ignored in favour of rushing for the bathroom.

\--------

The cut across Stiles’ cheek was almost fully healed when he found himself slouching behind his phone in the diner. All that was left was a thin pink line, that would likely fade off into nothing, but the last few millimetres were deeper than the rest – from sheer experience, Stiles knew that that section would likely scar. It was small enough that he was unconcerned, but he knew that his Dad would jump on it.

Sure enough, when his father bustled into the diner ten minutes later, he interrupted Stiles’ game of fruit ninja by grabbing his chin.

“Found your rogue then,” the Sheriff said disapprovingly.

“His name is Liam,” Stiles said as the Sheriff sat in the booth across from him. The older man stilled and tossed Stiles a surprised look.

“Congratulations, you’re a grandpa. Again.”

“Just like that? He’s pack?” John queried, keeping his voice neutral to avoid sounding judgmental.

“I’ll explain later,” Stiles offered when the door jingled and Stiles recognized James walking through into the diner, “act cool, Pops.”

The Sheriff snorted, shaking his head as James moved closer. He was staring at Stiles with narrowed eyes, before he spotted the Sheriff in the opposing booth. He looked torn between choosing to sit next to John or to face him for better conversation opportunity.

“Here,” Stiles offered, sliding over in his seat to make space, “join me.”

That was an olive branch, right? He looked at his dad as if to say ‘ _look at me being all kind and welcoming like,’_ missing the way that James blanched and settled on the very edge of the leather, like he was ready to bolt at any moment.

“Are you alright, son?” John asked, not really thinking through his word choice, but hoping to let it slide.

“Yup,” he squeaked, “fine!”

Stiles and the Sheriff exchanged looks.

“Alright then,” John said slowly, “I’ll grab us some menus.”

He slid out of the booth and headed to the counter, greeting the lady behind it warmly.

“Dude, for real, chill,” Stiles tried, because the guy was tenser than a coil, “Dad doesn’t bite, and neither do I.”

“No, a metal bat is really more your style,” James hissed, his fingers turning white on the table.

“What,” Stiles said flatly, eyes narrowing.

“I saw you last night,” James huffed, slightly more confident now, “and I don’t know what the hell you’re into, and I don’t want to know. All I care about if he knows,” James jerked his head towards John, “and if he’s covering up your… _skeletons.”_

Stiles jaw hung open.

“You think I’m a _murderer?”_

That was maybe a touch loud in the diner, and John glanced over his shoulder at their table.

“You _stabbed_ someone,” James argued, “what am I supposed to think?!”

“Liam is fine! I got off worse than him!”

“So that makes it okay, to just go around willy nilly and stab people!” 

“Who even says ‘willy nilly’ anymore?”

“Boys,” John interrupted as James’s shoulders squared for a fight, “are you sure this is the place?”

Both of the boys looked properly scolded, though James shot Stiles a sharp look, settling in their seats as far apart as possible.

“Should we leave? Because I should discuss this with Derek first if we do,” Stiles asked, his words heavily implying something that James didn’t understand.

“You’re kidding right? I’m starving. First, I want to learn about James,” John said, shooting the older boy a smile that James weakly returned, “and then James can learn about us.”

“He’s gonna get the wrong idea,” Stiles insisted, and John shrugged.

“Whatever you’re thinking Stiles is into kid, you’re wrong,” John said to James, who frowned, “it’s nothing illegal. Probably. And if it was, I wouldn’t have to arrest him, because Derek would. Now, let’s get some food. I’m thinking pancakes.”

James and Stiles exchanged a look, James’s questioning and weary while Stiles was suspicious and worried, and turned to their menus.

“Pancakes sound good,” Stiles said stiffly.

“Yeah, pancakes are fine,” James agreed, shuffling in his seat.

John looked between the two of them and sighed. He should have known this wouldn’t be easy. They had Stilinski blood in them, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to be faster next time? Annoy me @ Tumblr for faster results, mostly because I check my messages there more often and then feel super guilty. But hey; Alpha Pack ehhh?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are we seriously going to try and just eat breakfast with some chit chat when Stiles straight up stabbed someone last night?” James shot, seeing his opportunity, and John threw Stiles a sharp look while the younger man struggled to swallow.
> 
> “Dude,” Stiles coughed, “way to throw me under the bus!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to @Ebritishatheart, who left a dazzling series of comments that proceeded to remind me that I hadn't actually posted the next chapter yet and they were so nice I felt the need to not leave them hanging and waiting on the next chapter, and to the Anon from Tumblr who likes to remind me that I'm not a good person and I should write faster. Friendly reminder that I have completely given up on spell-checking my work, so sorry, no regrets.

John was at the point of praying for some kind of miracle, and barely fifteen minutes had passed. Stiles was bitterly murdering his pancakes, powering through his stack determinedly while James watched him out the corner of his eye, white knuckling his knife like he could use it as his syrupy defense if Stiles snapped and tried to stab him with his fork.

John had tried to keep the conversation happening, but it stuttered to a stop every few sentences, neither boy seeming in the mood to chat.

“Alright,” John huffed out, drawing the attention back to him, “you two are being ridiculous.”

Stiles’ eyes bugged out of his head in disbelief, the move made humorous by his chipmunk, pancake filled cheeks.

“Are we seriously going to try and just eat breakfast with some _chit chat_ when Stiles straight up stabbed someone last night?” James shot, seeing his opportunity, and John threw Stiles a sharp look while the younger man struggled to swallow.

“Dude,” Stiles coughed, “way to throw me under the bus!”

“Oh I’m sorry, I should totally protect the _attempted murderer_ ,”

“I’d at least give you the chance to explain yourself before running to Dad, because I’m not such a little _bit--_ ”

“Stiles,” John chastised.

“Dad!”

John tried to school his features into a serious look, but he had to hide his smile behind his coffee mug. They were too busy arguing to notice that they were arguing like family. 

“We should really talk about this elsewhere,” Stiles muttered, turning the mood serious, glaring at James who met the glare determinedly with only the smallest of tremors.

“Remember what I said last night?” John tried, and Stiles’ glare faltered, making him slump into the booth.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles said, folding his arms across his chest. James relaxed minutely in his seat.

“We’re here to get to know you,” John said, nodding at James, “and I get that you’re feeling a little freaked out by whatever it is you saw last night, and you’re probably thinking that there is a big conspiracy about it,” Stiles snorted, but looked appropriated chastised when John shot him a look, “and I promise we’ll explain everything after breakfast, and we’ll answer all of your questions,” Stiles opened his mouth and John repeated, “ _all_ of them,” more firmly.

“So I should just pretend last night _didn’t_ happen?” James asked sceptically.

“For the next 30 minutes,” John concedes, “because I’d actually like to learn a little bit about you before you get dragged into this mess we call a town.”

Stiles’ seems to slump further into his seat, and James fiddles with his fork, considering.

“What do you want to know,” he asks, and John lets out a heavy breath of relief, “cuz I have a whole list of like… normal questions I prepared.”

“Anything,” John admits, and Stiles glances up at his father at the trickle of hope in his voice. His dad really wanted this, and without even trying, Stiles was seriously fucking it up for him.

“What’s your favourite colour,” Stiles blurts out without thinking.

“Uh,” James offers, frowning, “green?”

“Really,” Stiles asks, sounding genuinely surprised, “nobody ever likes green.”

“I like the forest kind,” James defends himself, “it feels natural. Mom used to make all my quilts out of that colour when she knitted.”

Stiles held his hands up in surrender.

“Not judging. Mine’s purple.”

He didn’t say it was because of his Mom too, from when he was home from school sick when he was seven, and his Mom had broken out her old paint set. They’d painted rows of purple flowers on the white wall that now sat hidden behind the couch, because purple was the only paint that hadn’t dried out completely. There were two purple hand prints on that wall beside the flowers, and they’d never been able to bring themselves to paint over the larger one.

“How is Tabby?” John asked, changing the subject slightly. Stiles didn’t need to explain about the colour for John to understand it.

“Good! Good, she’s good. Um.  She graduated college when I turned two? She’s a nurse. Grandma used to look after me when she was at class or on night shift. Gram was a total hippy, passed away a while back, but she was cool. Anyway, Ma works as a school nurse now, up in Atlanta with Paul. He’s my step dad,” he offered, twisting his napkin.

“You have a type,” Stiles nodded to his dad, attempting to lighten the mood, and John rolled his eyes.

“Melissa is his girlfriend. She’s a nurse,” Stiles said to James at his confused expression.

“Maybe you’ll get to meet her,” John offered, and there was something shy about the way he did it.

“I’d love too,” James beamed. Stiles smiled weakly in encouragement.

“So, you just graduated?” John offered, and James nodded, and launched into a detailed description of his education.

Stiles zoned out, just a little, instead focusing on his father, who was listening intently, asking questions, dedicatedly interested. This is what he had wanted, to get to know his other son without some kind of supernatural element.

Without meaning to Stiles had taken away another opportunity for his father – having a family member outside of all of the craziness, outside of the supernatural. A nice, normal son who could talk about college, and his friends, and his hobbies without having to explain some obscure part of the supernatural world, or without having to censor the more bloody, life-threatening parts of the story. James had seen something he shouldn’t have, and now they had to explain themselves, and his father was going to lose another normal aspect of his life to the supernatural.

Stiles’ was startled back into the conversation by James and his father laughing.

 “…, so it was actually pretty fortunate someone was breaking the rules by smoking in the dorms, or I would have been stuck outside, naked, in minus 3 degree weather.”

“That’s what you get for drinking underage,” John chastised with a laugh, and Stiles looked back and forth between them, wishing they had more time.

“What were your questions?” John asked when the laughter died down.

“Well. Mostly, they were about Stiles,” James admitted sheepishly, “like normal questions,” he adds hurriedly, and Stiles’ eyes widened.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Like your name.”

 “Stiles isn’t his name,” John laughed.

“It’s better than my name,” Stiles jumped in quickly, “which we don’t have to discuss.”

“Stiles couldn’t pronounce his name when he was little. First or last name.”

“And who’s fault was that,” Stiles shot at his father, who steadfastly ignored him.

“So he took what he could pronounce and used that as his name, which was about half of Stilinski. Which, roughly, was pronounced Stiles.”

“You try being six and trying to get teach other children a name infucking Gaelic,” Stiles said, “I could barely say it and it was _my name!_ ”

“Anyway,” John chuckled at Stiles indignation at the old argument, “Stiles sort of stuck. After his mother passed… it was just easier.”

James looked between father and son, where Stiles giving his father a sad smile.

“It was her father’s name,” Stiles said quietly while John straightened his napkin, composing himself “she was the only one who could say it just right. Whenever someone else called me that it just… didn’t sound right. Stiles’ is easier.”

A heavy silence settled over the table, clinging to the air for a minute until Stiles cleared his throat.

“So, next question? I love talking about me.”

John snorted, and James offered up a smile that Stiles tentatively returned.

And it went on like that, for another half hour or so, tossing questions back and forth. Sometimes they were light and easy (“What do you study?”) and sometimes they took longer to answer, were harder to find the right words, (“What happened to your wife? If you don’t mind me asking. You don’t have to answer that.”), but they got to talk.

For the first time in a long time, the supernatural was barely a footnote in Stiles’ mind, the conversation almost completely revolving around blissfully normal things. It seemed so odd, the way the world was revolving outside of their little leather booth. Just a few short hours ago, Stiles was worried that the town was under attack. The pack had been waiting for an imminent attack from an Alpha Pack for which they would be woefully underprepared, wiping them from the planet and leaving the town defenceless. Now he was laughing over childhood stories he’d almost forgotten.

These were worlds he didn’t want mixing, because if they did he would lose this – this safe haven where he didn’t _have_ to worry about the supernatural things. He could just talk about the normal things, and enjoy his human life.

Of course, that was when the bell over the diner door rang, and like a hammer against a mirror, sent his two little worlds colliding together.

“Derek?” Stiles called, interrupting his dad mid-sentence, and directing the whole booth’s attention towards the door.

Derek was indeed coming over to them, with Parrish not far behind him, the frown written tightly across his face a warning of the news to come.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Derek said, his eyes on John rather than Stiles, “but we’ll have to call you in a little early, Sheriff.”

“What happened,” Stiles asked before John could get the words out, and James recognized Derek as the leather-wearing stalker from yesterday, eyes widening. He looked very different in his deputy’s uniform.

“We got a 187,” Derek offered, eyes darting sideways at James.

 “10-91V?” John asked sharply, and James gave his father a bewildered look.

“We don’t know yet,” Derek admitted, “we came to get you first.”

Stiles stared a hole at Derek who refused to look back. 187 was a homicide. 10-91V was a vicious animal. Didn’t know yet, his ass.

“I’m coming in,” John assured, and Derek tipped his head at the older man respectfully.

“Stiles, can I talk to you for a minute,” Derek asked, finally looking his way. Stiles rose an eyebrow, but slid out of his seat past James, who turned to let him through.

“What’s a 187?” James asked and John sighed.

“It’s a murder,” John admitted, and James shot a quick look at where Derek was talking to Stiles in a low voice.

“A young girl was found out in the woods,” Parrish offered, “and so far all we know is that whatever happened doesn’t seem like it was an accident.”

In the corner, whatever Derek was saying seemed to make Stiles very unhappy.

“A girl?” James clarified. Probably not Stiles’ fault then, he reassured himself.

“Yeah,” Parrish said, his voice solemn, and Stiles walked stiffly back to the table, Derek trailing behind him cautiously.

“You better go Dad,” Stiles said, jaw tight, “could be an emergency.”

John sighed and cast a mournful look at his pancakes. 

“You and James should go to the loft,” Derek said, and Stiles jaw tightened with a tick.

“You can take my shirt with you,” Parrish added, and James shot him a look like he was crazy while Stiles relaxed minutely, “Derek filled me in.”

“Thanks,” Stiles said like Parrish had just offered to bring him free food.

Parrish wasn’t pack, not really – he blatantly made it clear that pack wasn’t for him, that he’d seen enough war for his lifetime. But he helped out, he stayed close, and they thought of him as family nonetheless.

“We’ll be off then boys,” John said, nodding at James and Stiles separately, “so play nice.”

“Take him home,” Derek muttered quietly to Stiles while John gathered his things, but not so quietly that James couldn’t hear, “he has questions, and the pack will too. You might have sated their curiosity last night, but it’ll be back when he shows up.”

The three officers bid the boys goodbye, Derek pushing a small but determined kiss onto Stiles’ tight jaw, and left them at the table with a heavy silence.

“So if I go with you will you answer my questions or am I going to be found in a dark alley missing a finger?” James asked and Stiles was so startled by the question it took him a minute to form an answer.

“You make me sound like a psychopath,” Stiles complained and James shrugged.

“It’s a possibility,” he argued, and Stiles stopped for a second before giving a little nod of agreement before dropping into the seat across from James. It was startling, how Stiles went from loose-limbed and relaxed, to straight backed and squared shoulders, looking him dead in the eye. 

“Look,” Stiles said, “I’m gonna lay it all out for you here. If we go back to the loft, I’m gonna have to explain stuff that you’re not gonna enjoy hearing. Some of the stuff I’m going to tell you is going to sound insane, some of it is going to sound fake, and some of it will literally end lives if you repeat it, and once you hear it there will be no unhearing it. You’re gonna see some stuff you won’t be able to un-see. Most of all, you’re going to be introduced to something that is terrifying and makes my life a literal living hell on a regular basis, and you won’t ever be able to back out of it. It’s dangerous, and ridiculous, and you’ll be part of a group of people you’ll die for without thinking. And, most importantly, it’ll be the best part of your life.”

James was staring back at him with his mouth hanging open slightly, and eyes wide, and Stiles raised his chin slightly.

“If you’re in, we go there, and you go down the rabbit hole, take the little blue pill, the whole shebang. If you’re not, you forget about it. You forget about last night, you forget about anything weird that you ever think you heard or saw in Beacon Hills, and you don’t ask questions, and you just accept that I’m your quirky little half-brother. I’m not telling you to get out of this town, or stay away from Dad, but I’m saying, you’ll make limits that you can’t cross.”

“You sure know how to sell it,” James said weakly, and Stiles shrugged.

“For the amount of shit I’m going to cop for bringing you home with me, I’m damned well not risking you going in there unprepared.”

James dropped his gaze, letting it linger on the half eaten pancake stack across from him.

“Does he know? Our father?”

“It was difficult to hide it from him,” Stiles admitted honestly.

“That kid you stabbed. Is he alive?”

Stiles gave a funny little half smile.

He’d made his choice.

“You can ask him that yourself,” Stiles said, pushing out of the booth. James followed him without question, pulling his bag up over his shoulder.

“This is going to cause such a shit storm,” Stiles said delightedly as he held the diner door open for James to walk through, “I’m never going to hear the end of this one.”

\-----------

Stiles pushed open the door of the loft slowly, with a touch of dramatic flair, and James peered around the corner with a mix of curiousness and caution. The loft was busying for a weekday, to be honest.

Scott, Boyd, Derek, and Isaac were missing from the loft, all of them at work, but the rest of the pack had made themselves decidedly present. Erica and Alison surrounded the kitchen table that was covered in papers, one long enough to dip over the edge and reveal a portion of the blueprint that Erica was carefully marking under Alison’s quiet instruction. Lydia and Danny were busy in the kitchen with a production line of clear jars slowly filling the bench. Lydia was carefully capping them and moving them to the bags in the corner of the room while Danny mixed together a clear concoction.

Jackson was across the other side of the loft, in the corner dubbed ‘Ouch’ for its padded flooring. It was where the pack trained, human and wolf alike – it was all well and good to be strong, and fast, but if you couldn’t direct that productively, then what was the point of having those skills at all. You wouldn’t be able to defend yourself, or your pack. He was there with Liam, both of them sitting cross legged on the mat, facing each other. Jackson was talking quietly and Liam was listening with focused attention.

Another thing the pack was focused on was control. Speed, strength, skill – none of it mattered if when the time came, you couldn’t focus, you couldn’t control yourself long enough to think, decide, react. Jackson had found it the most difficult to learn his control, and because of that he was now the best at it. It had taken him a long time, a lot of pain, and a particularly picky witch to get him to where he was now. He was grounded and stable in their pack, and in himself.

“Welcome to the Loft,” Stiles said, his voice carrying. The pack stopped all at once, heads turning to focus on where they stood at the door and the momentary silence was awkward.

Surprisingly, it was Liam who broke it, seeming not to notice the awkwardness.

“Stiles!” he let out, jumping to his feet and darting across the loft. Everyone else moved more slowly, careful to finish their tasks before leaving their stations, Jackson pushing himself slowly off the ground. Liam tossed himself at Stiles’ bodily, and Stiles almost struggled to catch the 180 pounds of excited werewolf.

“Hey bud,” Stiles coughed out. New wolves were always like this, Stiles had discovered, keen to keep themselves close to the Alpha and cover themselves in the Alpha’s scent.

Liam pulled himself away almost sheepishly after a moment, eyes darting sideways at James, who looked terrified at the prospect of receiving the same treatment.

“Who’s this?” Liam asked innocently. James jumped about a foot in the air when Erica’s voice sounded up behind him, having not noticed the blonde circling around the pair.

“Smells like Stiles. I get what Isaac said now,” she confirmed, and James shot Stiles a wide-eyed look.

“What?”

Stiles shrugged.

“Told you it’d be weird,” Stiles muttered, before heading into the loft fully.

“This is the mysteriously appearing half-brother you were telling us about last night?” Lydia asked quietly while James tried unsubtly to sit as far from Erica as possible, “because I have to say, amongst all the planning and the mild terror, I never got the indication you’d bring him home.”

Stiles shrugged.

“I’ll explain to everyone,” he said with a slightly louder voice which prompted the pack to gather around the couches where Stiles had directed them.

“So,” Stiles started, “Liam, as you can see, is alive. And not bleeding out or otherwise injured.”

“Despite you stabbing him,” James said, glancing across at Liam suspiciously.

Liam glanced down at his stomach, lifting his shirt a little to reveal perfectly smooth skin, and shot James a surprised look.

“He only stabbed me a little,” Liam argued and Stiles snorted.

“Anyway, as you can tell, no harm, no fowl,” Stiles continued, and Liam gave a nonchalant shrug.

“Which raises the very interesting question of how you knew Liam had been stabbed,” Lydia asked, tipping her head to the side with an expression of mild curiosity. Stiles had long since learned that an expression of mild curiosity from Lydia was merely the first step in being eviscerated.

“I, uh. I was walking home from dinner at the diner, and there was a loud bang, and I actually thought I was being shot at,” James admitted, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of the stares from a majority of the pack, “and then realized that the noise was coming from inside a building I was walking past, and I looked through the window, and uh,” his eyes flicked between Jackson and Danny, “you guys were like. Dressed up. With special effect make up, and contacts, and I was starting to think whatever I was seeing some kind of prank. Or a super elaborate Vine production. And then Stiles just straight up stabbed some kid, and made some super creepy threats,”

“I told you they were too much like a super villain,” Jackson interrupted, only to be hushed by Lydia.

“Go on,” she waved to James, who fiddled in his spot.

“That was sort of everything.”

“After that you just what? Went home?” She asked suspiciously.

“Um. Yes?”

“You watched someone get stabbed, and you didn’t call the police,” she deadpanned, and Stiles smothered his grin.

“His father is the police! And apparently his boyfriend? I think?” He gave Stiles another weird look, “or this is an orgy, I literally have no idea at this point.”

“We get that a lot,” Erica confessed with a predatory grin, “care to join?”

“Super gross Erica,” Stiles blanched, “he’s related to me.”

“Please, like you have time for anyone outside of Derek,” Erica brushed off and Danny rolled his eyes, leaning forward in his seat.

“Not to be a nuisance but we should probably stay on track,” he insisted quietly, nodding his head at James, who shrugged.

“I confronted Stiles about at breakfast,” James offered, “I didn’t know if John knew, if he was… covering stuff up.”

Lydia tipped her head to the side, crossing from cute and curious, to otherworldly and dangerous, and James swallowed sharply.

“Yeah, I got nothing,” she admitted, relaxing back into her seat under Jackson’s arm, “he seems clean.”

“What was that?” James asked with a touch of shrillness to his voice.

“Most of the people in the room can tell if you’re lying,” Stiles admitted, “but Lydia can tell your intentions with a lie, or a truth. Either one can be equally manipulative if you need them to be.”

James glanced at Lydia, who smiled in a polite way.

“Ohhhhkay,” he nodded, obviously not believing a word Stiles was saying.

“So, how should we do this,” Stiles asked, leaning against the back of the couch, “slow and careful explanation? Or the Band-Aid method.”

“Always a fan of the band-aid method,” Danny voiced, “I know you were going to hit me with that one if I hadn’t guessed.”

“True,” Stiles agreed.

“Band-aid,” Alison contributed, “because we sound less nuts if we explain things after the proof.”

“Also true,” Stiles nodded, and then shrugged, “band-aid it is.”

“What do you mean by band-aid?” James asked, the slight fear in his voice having returned.

“It’s really, super easy to explain actually,” Stiles said, and he smirked, leaning forward. Around him, James watched as the smile spread from person to person, each of them anticipating something that he didn’t understand.

“But first, how about you tell us – what do you know about werewolves?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -laughs quietly to myself- 
> 
> I should be doing some much other stuff with my time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m an accountant,” James let out, and Stiles looked up with a frown of confusion.   
> “I don’t understand any of this,” James admitted freely, “I’m not even remotely equipped to deal with any of this. All I wanted was to finally meet my dad. Talk to him. Find out what he was like. All of this,” he waves his hand at the floor, to the pack on the level below, “was not in the brochure.”   
> Stiles snorted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -sing song-  
> I'm baaaacccckkkkk

There is a whispering, hovering somewhere above him, and snickering. The whole thing had an air of floating, but he wasn’t floating, was he?

No, that was ground under his back.

“James,” a voice called, and it sounded very far away.

“He fainted,” another voice said, closer this time, and there was a deep, unflattering snort of laughter.

“I know,” the first voice said, and now it sounded like it was only inches away, “and frankly I’m insulted. I figured, surely, it was Stilinski blood which made us so resilient, I guess-“

James groaned, his eyes fluttering open. His eyes landed on Stiles, who was staring down at him with a half-smile twisted across his face.

“Welcome back bro,” he said, and there was only the slightest hint of bitterness in those words.

“Wha,” James started, eyes flicking back to the stunning blonde on the other side of him. She grinned, teeth too sharp, eyes bright, and gold, and _shin-_

James yelped, scrambling backward until he smacked into a wall.

Stiles pushed himself up out of his crouch, and James blinked, taking in the room around him. It took a second before it came rushing back, chased into his mind with a sharp throb from the back of his head hitting the floor when he fell.

“You all there, bud?” Stiles asked, just a touch patronisingly.

“Stiles,” the copper haired girl - _Lydia_ he thought absently – chastised, “be nice.”

Stiles lifted his hands, almost in surrender, and rolled his shoulders like the muscles there were too tight.

“This is the weirdest pack I’ve ever seen,” the youngest boy, Liam?, said with a touch of awe.

There was a round of sharp snickered, including a vaguely villainous cackle out of Stiles.

“Don’t we know it,” he muttered. His phone buzzed, capturing his attention, and that of most of the room with it.

“Hey,” someone said softly, and James couldn’t help but startle. It was the brunette, who James didn’t actually know the name of, her long brown locks being tucked softly behind her ear, “this is a lot to take in. Stiles is just…” she glanced over to where Stiles was holding the back of a kitchen chair, his back tensed as he listened to whomever was on the other end of the line.

“An ass,” a smiling boy with sun kissed said, his hand extended, “but to be fair, you caught us at a bad time. Like a super, bad time,” he insisted and James took his hand just a touch unwillingly. He was yanked to his feet, not unkindly, and he brushed his clothes with a touch of embarrassment.

“Are you…?” he started, unable to bring himself to finish the sentence.

“A wolf?” the boy questioned, and his eyes sparked a bright gold when he nodded. It faded after a mere second.

James let out a heavy breath.

“Danny,” the boy, Danny, said, holding out the same hand he’d helped James up with. James took it, giving a firm shake, momentarily realising that this was the second time they had met, thinking of the police station.

His brain was all muddled, a puddle of questions, confusion, and underlying with fear. He glanced back to the blonde girl, who had taken her attention off him and turned it toward Stiles, her face set into a frown. A quick glance told him that everyone was staring at Stiles, waiting, and he took the opportunity to scan the room, taking in the fact that he looked like he was the oldest one there.

“Alright,” Stiles bit out, and James’ neck clicked as he flicked his head over. It took a second to realise he was still on the phone, and that the air in the room had gone cold.

Actually cold, in the barest of seconds.

Like, he took a deep breath of warm air and released it into the freezing air in a puff of white smog.

Stiles tossed his phone onto the table and let out a heavy breath. Nobody in the room moved, but Liam let out a whine, too high to be human.

“Jesus,” Stiles muttered, rubbing his face, and the air snapped back to warm in a second.

“What was that,” James said, breaking the careful silence, waving his hand at the room, “with the air?”

“Stiles does that sometimes,” Lydia supplies like she’s being helpful, but she’s studying James like he was something particularly sticky under her shoe.

“Oh, okay then,” James says, his voice too high for even his own ears. Some heads turn to him like they expect him to continue, to tip over the edge into a full-blown melt down – he wouldn’t be the first – but he didn’t go on. He just swallowed thickly, staring down at his shoes.

“Body was human,” Stiles said, and there was an awkward shifting in the room.

“Hunter?” the brunette girl who was standing near him asked, and he was surprised at the force of it – like somehow, the answer to that question could make it _her_ responsibility.

“Nah,” Stiles said, too casually, “not a hunter. Derek thinks maybe a druid, though, based on the smell,” he turns, facing the pack again, and leaning against the edge of the kitchen table. He surveys the room with a pinched expression.

“We’re going to be stretched thin,” he says, seemingly mostly to himself, eyeing Liam carefully. For a second, just a second, his eyes dart to James, before flickering back to the back of the room.

“Jackson,” he calls, and the boy stands straighter, “keep Liam in line. And keep James here, safe,” he adds, and James bristles a little.

He has no idea why, but his arms crossed his chest as it puffs out.

“What’s going on? I can help, I don’t need a babysitter,” he says with a frown, and the blonde girl snickers again.

“Oh, he’s a Stilinski alright,” she cackles with a gleam in her eye, “stubborn to the bone must be written into your DNA.”

Stiles looks back at James, and James feels his chin tilt up. He ignores the hammering in his chest, the way his palms feel slick where they’re pressed against his arms, and Stiles--

Stiles deflates a little, noticeably, and James’ feels himself relax just slightly, somehow feeling bad about it at the same time.

“Did you just have an argument using _posture,_ ” Jackson groans, and Stiles gives James a tired, open look, suddenly and shockingly looking every bit, the young age James knew he was, not even old enough to order a legal drink.

“Look, I can’t force you to stay here,” he starts, and a noise from the back of the room rounds an awful lot like ‘yeah, right’, but Stiles’ powers ahead, “but whatever is happening, it’s bad. Really bad. So, I’m going to ask, that you please, _please_ , stay here. I don’t know you yet, and I’d like too.”  

James lets his arms fall to his side.

“Yeah,” he cracks out, and he can’t help the way his stomach knots.

Stiles nods, and looks down at his feet. Around them, the pack is moving, returning to whatever it was that they were doing when they’d arrived. Stiles nods his head to James, a none too subtle ‘follow me,’ trudging up the stairs.

James went, and tried not to shy away from the hands that grazed over his arms, his shoulders, patted his back as he passed.

He found himself in what he assumed was an office, the left-hand wall covered in paper, photos, and red string. He eyed it curiously for just a second before Stiles was sinking into a chair in front of him.

“Look,” Stiles started, and James shifted his weight, like a school boy being scolded by a principle, “this is. This is not how any of this should have gone. I don’t…” he fiddles with the edge of the office chair, picking at the stitching, “you’re.”

He stopped again, letting out a heavy breath, his head ducked.

“I’m an accountant,” James let out, and Stiles looked up with a frown of confusion.

“I don’t understand any of this,” James admitted freely, “I’m not even _remotely_ equipped to deal with any of this. All I wanted was to finally meet my dad. Talk to him. Find out what he was like. All of this,” he waves his hand at the floor, to the pack on the level below, “was not in the brochure.”

Stiles snorted, and James wet his lips, frowning.

“But, I can’t,” he let out a heavy breath, frowning deeper, “my whole like, I’ve wanted to find my father. I found him. Found a little brother,” he adds, and this is softer, and Stiles is looking at him with a blank face and tight eyes, “and I used to dream of that you know? Meeting him, his family.”

He steels himself, and Stiles sits up, his face more guarded than before.

“I’m not going to let a bunch of freakin’ mythical creatures stand in the way of that,” he says determinedly, and Stiles’ carefully guarded expression drops into one of surprise before he can pull it back.

James squirms under his critical gaze.

“You sure?” is what Stiles manages to bite out, “you’re sure you want to be putting yourself into this? I wasn’t kidding before, when I said this was dangerous. You could die. You could be maimed beyond words, set on fire, shot with arrows, shot with bullets, pulled apart.”

James can’t help but feel like those examples are chosen for specificity.

“What else is a big brother for?” he says weakly, with the smallest of chuckles.

There’s a moment, just a second, where Stiles looks like he is going to move toward him. Hug him.

“You’re in shock,” he says, but his mouth does that twist, half a smile, like James is forgiven for being a fragile little human.

He laughs, and even to his own ears it sounds a touch unhinged.

“Yeah, probably,” he admits, because. Fuck. He’s a god damn accountant. This is all a little much.

“I thought you were a cult leader,” James blurts, figuring he’ll be forgiven if he’s still in shock, “or a serial killer.”

Stiles grins, a full-blown grin, and it lights up his whole face.

“You’re not the first,” and it’s almost cheerful.

“Got yourself a bit of a reputation?” James asks, because – who else would know, for there to be a reputation. For a fleeting moment, he wonders just how deep the rabbit hole goes, before he jokes, “are you like a godfather? Mob boss who everyone owes favors? On this, the day of my daughter’s wedding style?”

Stiles laughs, and James laughs him.

“Yeah, I guess I…” he trails off, staring at the ground for a moment. James clears his throat, and Stiles springs up, and his smile is so wide that James almost takes a step back.

“People owe me favors,” he squeaks reverently, shaking his hands at James like he should understand how _important_ that was, and James nods like he does.

Stiles springs forward, and James finds himself on the receiving end of a smothering hug. He barely has time to return it before Stiles has released him and is bounding down the stairs.

“People owe us FAVORS,” he yells, and James is left standing in the office, staring straight ahead.

_What the fuck._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’re about to do something really stupid, aren’t we,” Derek breathes, and Stiles’ lips quirk.   
> “That depends on your definition of stupid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm avoiding all of my adult responsibilities by dealing with Stiles' adult responsibilities instead.   
> That's healthy, right?

_“Jesus, when did you stop trusting us?”_

To be honest, he didn’t realize that he had. He muses about it, like he has all the time in the world, like they aren’t just sitting around, waiting to find out if they’re about to be helped, or crippled.

He’s sitting on the top of the stairs, and he can’t help but feel a little like he’s brooding, frowning down at his pack through the railing. Derek would be proud of the next level angst he’s dwelling in.

They ignore him, too focused on their own tasks at hand, not ready to give him the time of day he wasn’t entirely sure he deserved. They followed orders, crisply, willingly, and Stiles doesn’t like the way he looks down and has to focus to see the way they’re passing each other, with subtle touches, half smiles.

He forgets sometimes, in his desperate efforts and stupid errors trying to pull them together that they weren’t his soldiers. _God,_ he thinks to himself, squeezing the space over his nose, _how fucked up is that._

He didn’t know how else to handle these situations. The same people who would claw their way through the enemies were the ones who he wanted shoved behind locked doors, as far away from the troubles as he could get them. 

Stiles let his eyes wander over his pack, _his pack_ , and his eyes linger on Liam, trip unwilling across the room to James, and he has to squeeze them shut.

“ _Since when has being part of this family become something that is earned Stiles_ ,”

It wasn’t about earning, he had realized as he sat in his shadows, it was about _losing._ Being part of _this_ , the pack, the family, his world, was all about the risk of very suddenly not being part of it anymore.

They’d been so lucky, Stiles wasn’t unaware of that. He knew, _knew_ , how lucky they had been. He lets his eyes drift to Erica. Sometimes he thinks her hair is still tinted red from all the blood when they’d pulled what was left of her out of the ground.

Scott had saved her, desperately pouring too much of himself into something that he didn’t fully understand.

Stiles had stood by, useless, thinking _I wondered how long it was going to be before we lost a beta,_ and it had been so detached that when Erica sucked in a deep, desperate, wet breath, the panic attack that had raced through his chest at the sound of it completely took him off guard.

Erica wasn’t the only one they’d nearly lost.

Every time he felt the clenching in his chest, the _this is it,_ it wasn’t. And it didn’t unwind when his pack was back at home, safe, curled around him, it just sat there, unfadingly present and squeezing a little tighter every time they scramble back home wearing more of their own blood than anyone else’s.

He trusted them, god he trusted his pack with his life and their lives, but he couldn’t- he needed to keep them _safe_ , that was his responsibility. If keeping them safe meant keeping them just slightly at arm’s length, he could do that right?

“Hey,” Derek’s voice called softly, and Stiles eyes snapped open to where Derek was standing at the bottom of the stairwell, looking up at him with a carefully blank face.

And that was something that hurt more than anything else. When had he and Derek started doing this? Hiding themselves from each other?

Derek climbed the stairs, settling into the space next to him at the top.

“This is very Batman of you,” Derek muses, peeking down at the pack, and Stiles snorts, but says nothing, letting the silence settle. Derek waits, and Stiles knows he’s waiting.

“I’m sorry,” is how he starts, and Derek slips his hand through Stiles, curling their fingers together, encouraging and quiet, “if you think that I don’t trust you. I do, I trust you, I trust the pack, I… I’m just really fucking sorry okay.”

Derek squeezed his hand, and Stiles catches Derek’s thumb with his own, holding it in place and staring at it while he tries to gather his words.

“I’m trying,” is want he manages, and Derek’s quiet, “I know,” makes Stiles lets out a heavy breath.

“You’re not alone,” Derek reassures, and Stiles doesn’t say ‘that’s the problem,’ but judging from the way Derek’s fingers are pushing at his chin, forcing without force, tilting Stiles head up to meet his eyes, he hears him anyway.

“We’ll deal with this,” Derek says, so confidently that Stiles almost believes him, “and everything that comes after it, and we’ll be _fine_. This whole pack, we will be _fine._ ”

Stiles feels just the slightest bristle at that, and it takes him a second to identify it.

“No,” he says, and it doesn’t sound as uncertain as he feels.

“None of us are going to die, Stiles,” Derek says, and Stiles shakes his head.

“ _No,_ no, I know that, that’s not what I meant,” he corrects, bringing his eyes back to Derek’s, “I’m not saying we won’t succeed, I’m saying _we won’t have too_.”

Derek’s face crunches slightly in confusion, and Stiles reaches out, settling his hand on Derek’s cheek.

“I miss you,” he says, and there’s a pain there, “I miss us… sharing. It’s like you’re walking on eggshells around me every time there’s a crisis and I hate that,” Derek’s face shifts to guilt and he opens his mouth to defend himself, but Stiles’ hand moves, covering it.

“I’m sick of feeling like we’re one bad day away from having our whole world falling apart,” he admits, feeling Derek’s warm breath against his palm, “and I’m sick of waiting for all the worst things to come crawling out of their deep, dark holes to try and find us to try.”

“We spent months, _months,_ making treaties, and deals, and having meetings, and what have we done with that? Nothing. We told the whole world ‘if you leave us alone, we’ll leave you alone,’ like we thought that would _work,_ ” he adds bitterly, and Derek pulls Stiles’ hand away from his mouth, but doesn’t speak.

“I’m done waiting for them to come to us,” Stiles says and this time when he meets Derek’s eyes, he can see the spark of acknowledgement behind them, and something else that’s deep and burning.

“We’re about to do something really stupid, aren’t we,” Derek breathes, and Stiles’ lips quirk. 

“That depends on your definition of stupid.”

\--

“So, five,” Stiles asks again, pacing slightly, his mind whirling.

The whole pack was here, Stiles dad distracting James in the corner while the wolves were gathered around Liam. The poor boy looked so much younger like this, like he was seconds away from being eaten.

“Kali, Ennis, Aiden, Ethan, and,”

“Deucalion,” Stiles says before Liam can finish, and he nods, “the blind one. That’s the Alpha. Alpha alpha? Alphalpha?”

Jackson snorts and Derek rolls his eyes.

“Seriously?” Scott asks incredulously, and Stiles grins at him, adorably pleased.

“And they bit you three months ago,” Derek continues, because Stiles looked seconds away from being distracted, “and you haven’t seen them do anything with any other supernatural creatures.”

Liam shook his head, a touch too aggressively in his efforts to agree, and Stiles scratches at his chin.

“So, they didn’t send the ghouls?”

For a second, Liam looked so disarmingly confused that Stiles didn’t need his shake of ‘no’ to answer the question.

“Ghouls are real?” Liam asks with quiet horror, and Stiles’ figures someone else can handle that, making eye contact with Derek.

No Ghouls probably means no Fae. No witches. No hunters.

The Alpha pack wasn’t the cause of all their problems. They were another symptom.

“Liam,” he says, cutting off Danny who had started to explain ghouls and only feeling a little bit rude about it, “Deucalion. Did he say why he was coming here?”

There’s a tense silence while Liam shifts uncomfortably.

“He didn’t really share with me,” Liam says, and Isaac shifts like he’s going to move toward him. Stiles hand on his arm stops him.

It’s killing them, all of them, to not pile onto their pack member when he’s so clearly in distress.

“But he seemed… like he wasn’t really. It didn’t seem like he was all there. When he was saying we should come here. He kept insisting, but it was like he didn’t know himself. I thought it was for you,” Liam admits, and Derek’s snarl was less than ideal timing. Stiles’ tosses him a look as he composes himself.

The atmosphere in the room was far too intense.

They knew this part of the story already, that Deucalion collected Alpha’s like prizes, convincing them to kill their entire packs. The more of your betas you kill, the stronger you get.

“I was for you,” Liam says plainly, like he was saying ‘it’s a warm day outside,’ “a beta gift.”

Surprisingly, it’s Scott who understands first, and his sharp inward breath makes the whole pack shift.

The tense air was broken by Scott falling forward, wrapping long arms around Liam. The rest of the pack follows, and Stiles finds himself having to squeeze in between his betas to get to Liam. They shift for him, and Stiles doesn’t miss the ripple of movement as they let Derek move closer as well.

“Deucalion clearly doesn’t know us very well,” he says, and he touches his forehead against the younger boy’s, reveling in the comfort of being surrounded by his pack, safe and sound.

Stiles had been right. Liam was sent like a lamb to the slaughter – a gift wrapped beta. The first to die. Deucalion had clearly thought that if they started with someone they weren’t as close too, it would be easier.

It feels like hours later, thought it was probably a handful of minutes, when Liam says, “the twins, they were my alphas,” and Stiles nods against him, and he gets it.

They were only Alpha’s by being together, as one, when they shifted.

“I’ll fix it,” Stiles says, and Liam sighs at how Stiles’ heart remains steady in his chest at the words.

“They were just like I was,” Liam adds, and then he’s looking up at Stiles, eyes begging, “they didn’t want this. If you can, please,” he starts and Stiles shushes him, nodding, understanding.

“If I can.”

\--

It was a good two hours before Stiles extracted himself from the pile, approaching the corner where his dad and James were settled. James looked exhausted, not used to the constant thrum of tension, fiddling with his phone absent-mindedly while staring at the wall. His dad was reading the case report for the body they’d found, and it felt like an eternity ago.

Stiles cleared his throat – his dad looked up and James jumped about a foot in the air. They both turned to look at him, one of John’s eyebrows cured high on his forehead.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and Stiles laughs, not unkindly.

“Don’t worry, I get it,” he says, shrugging, “the waiting is the worst part.”

“How do you _do_ this,” James says vehemently, waving his arm around the room, “I feel like I’m going to pass out but I also need to run like… five miles.”

Stiles smile is a little sadder when he says “practice,” in a sad voice. He turns towards their dad, shoving his hands into his pockets. His shoulders are hunched and he looks young again, like he’s a kid being disciplined.

“Dad, do you… can we talk?”

It’s irrational, but the uncertainty in Stiles voice was something that James had never heard, and barely knowing him didn’t stop him from wanting to reach out and… he didn’t know. Defend him?

That’s something brothers did, right?

“Yeah,” John replies with a nod, scooping up his papers. Stiles jerks his head to the stairs and they troop away, Stiles’ expression like a man before the firing squad.

James stares after them, wondering what the fuck he’d gotten himself into. He looks down at his phone, at the several worried messages from his mom checking in that he hadn’t had the courage to reply too.

He told his mom _everything_. For the first thirteen years of his life it had just been him and her, against the world, and she _was_ his everything. Sure, now he was an adult, and their lives were different, comfortable, separate, but she was his mom. There wasn’t even a hair of a secret between them.

She’d know immediately if he was lying to her, so not replying was the better of the two options.

“You’re handling this well,” a voice rumbles behind him, and James whips around to Derek, who at least has the decency to look sheepish.

“Sorry,” he adds, taking the seat John had vacated, “I move quiet.”

“Everyone does apparently,” James adds, under his breath, and Derek gives him half a smile, letting out a heavy breath.

“Is it always like this?” James asks despite himself and Derek shrugs.

“Sometimes,” he adds when James won’t stop staring, “sometimes not. It’s not all murder and mayhem. Most of the pack is studying all across the country, so when we come together, we just want to be together. This isn’t our idea of a good time,” Derek adds and James snorts, because frankly, when he’d first met Derek he seemed like the type of guy who thought drowning kittens was his idea of a good time.

“Stiles is under a lot of pressure,” Derek adds, and the eye contact is just slightly the wrong side of uncomfortable, “don’t. He’s not normally like this. Once this is done, we’ll be better. He’ll be better. You’ll like him,” Derek finishes lamely, letting his gaze drop.

“The first time I met him, he was threatening me,” James says, and his voice sounds just a little bit fond, and Derek snorts.

“First time I met him, he was threatening someone else,” Derek admits, and James raises an eyebrow.

“I thought you said he wasn’t normally like this?”

Derek’s eyes turn toward the staircase, like he can see Stiles through the wood.

“He isn’t. He was protecting me,” he adds, bringing his eyes back to James, “he didn’t even know me. He just saw a bunch of hunters smash in my car window and then he was… there. Defending me. Threatening them. Like he didn’t care if he got _shot_ , so long as someone apologized for my window.”

Derek shook his head, smiling at the memory.

“He didn’t stop either,” Derek continues without prompting, and James gets the feeling that he doesn’t do this often, from the way Derek fiddles with the hem of his sleeve, “he kept defending me. Like it was his responsibility to crush every injustice against me,” he adds with an eyeroll, “and I don’t think he realizes he doesn’t have to keep doing that.”

Derek’s voice is a little more sober as he continues.

“Stiles protects his family. Fiercely. Unwaveringly. If Stiles’ loves you, you have no idea how lucky you are, because he’d burn the whole world to the ground to keep you safe. Every time someone joins the pack, the list of people he needs to keep safe grows and the problems just _keep coming_.”

“He doesn’t know how to do something half-assed, does he,” James asks, already knowing the answer.

Derek is quiet for a long moment, staring at his pack where they were piled across the floor and couch. They didn’t look entirely comfortable but none of them so much as twitched in the pile. They were murmuring to each other, a low, comforting hum of noise.

“What I’m saying is don’t be offending if it takes some time,” Derek finishes, looking back at James and his expression for the first time is unguarded, honest, “he’s still learning that he’s not alone in this.”

James turns his gaze away from Derek’s, eyeing the pack pile. There is a creak on the stairs and James watches as Stiles descends, trailing after his father. His eyes are red rimmed, and Derek is moving toward him between one breath and the next. John doesn’t really look much better, but he pats Stiles on the back, a small, reassuring gesture, and clears his throat gruffly, moving for the kitchen.

For a moment, just a moment, the room settles comfortably, like a string that had been pulled taunt for too long is let lax, and James feels the pressure on his chest release slightly.

So, of course, that’s when the doorbell rings.

\--

There’s a whole new tension in the air, and Stiles seems more comfortable with this kind because it’s not about him, or his pack.

It’s the two witches in the room, glaring at each other from across the coffee table.

Stiles had dismissed the pack for this. Derek had stayed of course, it was his pack too, but he was silent, standing at Stiles’ shoulder as a pillar of support.

Just getting them to agree to be in the same room had used up what little favor Stiles had with either of them. Independently, they were friends with the pack. Well. Friendly. Enough not to bother each other.

“I hope you know that by asking me here, _with her_ ,” the first witch, a young woman, barely in her twenties, spits, “you’re rescinding all treaties we’ve works so hard for?”

Stiles didn’t take the treat seriously. Angela was struggling with her new authority, granted too soon, and she was quick to snap. It had made negotiations a _bitch_.

“When you’re done acting like a child,” the other witch snapped back, more annoyed than pissed off, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “perhaps you’d like to hear what Alpha Stilinski has to say?”

Stiles liked Wendy. She was a pretty woman in her mid-forties, blonde hair in a short bob, and laugh lines around her eyes. Her clothes and stances said, ‘soccer mum’ not ‘deadly coven leader’, but then again, nobody really did scream that just from standing. Her negotiations had been difficult for a whole different set of reasons.

Angela’s eyes narrow, and her mouth opens again, but Stiles lifts his hands.

“I need your help,” he says, and the confession acts like a fire blanket on a blaze at settling the tension in the room.

“My help?” Angela questions, and she’s right too. Her coven is small, much smaller than Wendy’s. That was part of the tension. Wendy’s coven had tried, unsuccessfully, to incorporate Angela’s into their fold.

Stiles’ pack hadn’t been involved in that, any of that, but he knew from the stories. It had been bloody, and unforgiving. Leadership had changed many hands, before Wendy had become the head of her coven and pulled back. Angela was only the leader of her coven because her mother had been _murdered in front of her_.

It led to some bad blood.

“Both of your help,” Stiles corrects, and both are frowning at him.

“I need a channel,” he says, “and I need it to be open. I need to be in control of everything you give me, and I need to load to be shared.”

Angela’s eyes widen, and she glances at Wendy, who seems just as shocked.

They both knew that Stiles was a spark. They both knew what that meant for magic.

And they both knew what he was asking.

They knew, without speaking, that magic wasn’t some never ending source of power. Every action had an equal and opposite reaction. Sharing the load meant that whatever Stiles wanted, whatever he was asking--

“How many,” Wendy asks, and there is an edge to her voice. It’s not unkind, more concerned with a touch of pity, “how many people are you killing.”

“Hopefully none,” Stiles replies, and Angela sucks in a deep breath at the confirmation, “but, at worst. Five.”

“Five,” Wendy breathes, and Stiles nods sharply.

“There’s more,” Derek grumbles, and Stiles mouth is a flat, hard line.

“More?” Angela laughs, and it’s a little hysterical, “more than _murder?_ ”

“They’re Alpha’s. All of them.”

Angela looks momentarily terrified, but Wendy’s face drops into pure _terror_.

“You want us to lend you the power to kill the _Alpha Pack?!”_

Her shriek is less than civil, and it’s enough to make Angela take a step aside. For all the anger between them, there was also a begrudging respect – For Wendy, it was Angela’s natural ability to lead, to focus, to support. For Angela, it was Wendy’s experience, her calm. Which was rightly broken at that point.

“We don’t… I can’t guarantee that the power will go to you,” she says after a moment, composing herself, “that we can give you that.”

Alpha’s require more magic to kill. If it came down to it, one witch against one Alpha, the Alpha would die – but so would the witch, so completely, that everything around them would wilt away to nothing. Wendy’s coven was big, big enough that half could agree to lend their strength and they’d still be able to leave the Alpha’s to the dust.

“Which is why you’re both here,” Stiles finishes, looking between them.

Angela’s coven was small. They had the ability to focus, together, as one, just the four of them, and channel their magic into Stiles. Wendy’s coven was too large to focus the magic to one person, one place, with too many minds and motives redirecting the power unintentionally. But Wendy’s coven could lend their magic to Angela’s, share their power to let the smaller coven focus it.

Wendy and Angela exchange glances. The age difference between them is large, so much so that Wendy could be Angela’s mother, and there’s something close to pain in that realization.

“If something goes wrong,” Wendy starts, looking at Angela instead of Stiles, “the back kick to your coven could kill them all.”

It’s a lot, what he’s asking. He knows that. Wendy looks back to him, and her expression is steely.

“We will serve you, Alpha Stilinski,” she says, and it’s formal, a declaration. Stiles knew she would. It’s not personal – it’s not a _favor_ per say, but rather a repayment, “but only,” she tacks on, glancing at Angela, “if the Pichler Coven agrees. There is much more at risk for them. I will not risk their coven to settle my debts.”

Angela looks down right startled by that, but Stiles isn’t in the slightest. There was a reason why he called these two covens, out of the half a dozen in his list.

“You can have some time, if you need,” Stiles offers, and beside him Derek’s fingers wrap through his.

Angela nods, chewing her lip.

“I have to speak to the coven,” Wendy says in way of dismissal, not unkindly, “call when a decision has been reached,” she dips her head slightly at Stiles before disappearing out the door.

“Me too,” Angela says, hugging herself, “talking to the coven, I mean.”

Her nod to Stiles is much jerkier than Wendy’s, like she didn’t realize it was needed, still learning the formalities of a coven leader, and she strides out into the hall, closing the door behind her with a click.

Stiles lets out a heavy breath.

“That went much better than I expected,” Stiles admits, and Derek wraps his arms around him.

“I’m proud of you,” he whispers into Stiles’ hair, and Stiles grins into his chest.

“It wasn’t my idea you know,” Stiles confesses, and Derek hums his question into Stiles hair, “it was James. Sort of. Something he said reminded me that there were people who could help us. That we didn’t have to go through this by ourselves, that we could get some help.”

Derek squeezes him and Stiles leans into it.

“I just needed to be reminded,” Stiles presses gently, tipping his head to press his lips to Derek’s neck.

Neither of them needed to say anything to know that Stiles wasn’t talking about James in that moment.

\--

Angela rings an hour later.

The covens are ready two hours after that.

They start simple, a summoning spell to the warehouse district. It wasn’t so much a subtle push for the wolves to meet them as a flaming, demanding invitation with a time and place.

Witches were badass.

\--

As the time approaches, Stiles can’t help but feel proud of how this worked out. His entire pack would be in the loft, as far away from the danger as they can get, surrounded by the safety of a dozen witches and the wards that Scott had so carefully set up at every entrance point.

Even the witches had noticed. Scott preened at the compliments from a bunch of middle age women and men, and Stiles couldn’t help but return the dopy grin sent his way.

“You’ll have about two hours before we can’t direct the flow anymore,” Angela says, redirecting his attention back to her, “will that be enough?”

Stiles glances at his watch. The meeting time was set for twenty minutes from now.

“More than.”

Angela nods, looking more sure of herself than she had earlier.

“Wendy,” she calls, her voice unwavering, “we’re ready.”

Wendy stands gracefully.

“Then let’s begin.”

\--

It’s a little like being electrocuted at first. The sharp shock of it, smacking into his chest so hard he actually stumbles, but he holds it, straightening himself.

It takes a moment for the feeling to settle, so he stands with his hands in fists, his eyes squeezed shut until it doesn’t feel like he has bugs crawling under his skin, but when it relaxes, he can feel it --the deep well in his stomach of swirling, untapped, magic. His to command, however he wanted.

The power feels…

Incredible.

He doesn’t have to hear the quiet gasps of his pack to know that when he opens his eyes, they’re a brilliant, bright, red.

\--

In the end, it feels anti-climactic, if Stiles is telling the truth.

He’s standing in the middle of the warehouse, because all evil showdowns should happen in a dingy warehouse.

How else is he supposed to know that they’re having a show down with the big bad if they didn’t do it in a dingy old warehouse?

The only way this could be more stereotypical is if they were in the school gym.

“Alpha Stilinski,” he’s greeted, and honestly, that’s down right disrespectful.

“Funny,” Stiles says coolly without a hint of humor, “you didn’t seem to care so much about my status when you released an omega into my territory. Or when you’re murdering druids in my forests.”

The man chuckles good naturedly. He is tall, and thin, and has a smile that Stiles recognizes.

“Just testing the waters,” he says, the same way someone might say ‘it’s a prank!’, not unkindly and just a touch abashed, “did you at least enjoy the gift? You hadn’t taken a beta in so long I thought you’d appreciate it. A peace offering,” he finishes, and it sounds like anything but.

Stiles didn’t respond to that, just glared, hard and heavy.

He could feel the other Alphas, circling like sharks with blood in the water, and Stiles has a fleeting thought of _how silly, leaving all your pups in one place,_ but he doesn’t say it.

“You should call off your dogs,” he says, both literal and figuratively, “before one of them gets hurt.”

That earns him a raised eyebrow.

“Really now,” the man, Deucalion, all but drawls, and Stiles tips his head, just slightly, to the side – outwardly, that’s all the movement he gives. Inwardly, his stomach clenches, releases, like a bolt of electricity charging out of him.

There is a yelp from behind him, one that chokes off in a deep gurgle, and Deucalion sucks in a breath, his hands tightening on his cane.

“Well,” he hissed, like he couldn’t hear a member of his pack _drowning in their own fucking blood._

Stiles tips his head back up. The gurgling stops, replaced by a desperate gasping, and there is a heavy, constant growl from somewhere to his left. He turns his head to the side – he knows, deep down, that’s what Deucalion will find the most disrespectful, the shift in attention. Like Stiles was so _convinced_ of his own strength that he needn’t keep a firm eye on the Alpha of Alpha’s.

The boys – twins – were probably younger than he was. Stiles hummed thoughtfully as one held the other, as though being in his presence would be enough to help him pull the air back into his lungs. The gasping one, was staring at Stiles with nothing short of horror, hand on his throat, not quite managing to cover the thick, white roping scar there. Stiles had opened his throat like a hot knife through warm butter without even glancing his way, and knitted it back together just as easily.

“Someone has a witch,” Deucalion tsks, like Stiles was a child breaking the rules. Stiles turns his head back towards the older man slowly, his expression bored.

“No shit Sherlock. You think, just because you’re the ‘Alpha of Alphas’ I should what. Quiver before you like an itty-bitty rabbit, settle back and let the _wolves_ take care of it?” he laughs, and it’s a hollow sound, “A few months ago and you might have made it up onto my shit list. I might have been, dare I say it, scared of you,” he admits, freely, and then he’s looking at Deucalion like he’s a disappointed father, “but you’re not even my biggest worry of the _weekend_.”

There is a snarl at the disrespect, and someone launches – a larger, male wolf, who Stiles distantly identifies as Ennis from Liam’s detailed descriptions of his old pack.

He doesn’t make it very far.

He’s stuck, hovering in the air, unmoving, like he’s frozen there.

“This is my last warning,” Stiles says, and this time it’s cold, unflinching, unforgiving, _determined,_ “you will take your pack and leave. You will not come back. You will not go near my pack, or any pack who holds an alliance to my pack. You will get the _hell_ out of my territory, and you’ll tell anyone who has the misfortune of coming across you that they aren’t welcome here. Do you understand?”

Deucalion rubs his chin, almost thoughtfully, and then he’s shaking his head.

“You know. I don’t think I will,” he says, and the smile is Peter levels creepy, “because for all your _showmanship_ , your pack has never been one to _murder_.”

Stiles doesn’t even move his eyes off Deucalion and Ennis is slamming into the floor. He doesn’t flinch when Ennis doesn’t even get a whimper all the way out, the popping and cracking like a firecracker going off. He’s crushed – literally – under the weight of the magic, and Stiles doesn’t have to look over to know that Ennis is nothing more than a dead Alpha pancake.

Deucalion’s lip pulls up in a silent snarl.

“You know nothing about my pack,” Stiles says in a dead voice, “this isn’t a negotiation. This isn’t a _fight_. I didn’t come here for chit chat and back and forth. I’m presenting you with the offer of leaving only because my pack would be very disappointed if I just crushed you into the round without offering a way out. You will leave, or _I will kill you_. Those are the options.”

Kali – the only female Alpha in the group – appears by Deucalion’s side, materializing out of the shadows. Stiles’ notes the claws on her feet, and the way her eyes burn red at him.

“We should go,” she says quietly, eyes staring right at Stiles.

“Wise choice,” Stiles agrees.

He almost doesn’t expect when Deucalion’s hand shoots out, and Kali is falling to the ground, throat missing.

Almost.

This was never going to be anything short of a bloodbath. He’d known that right from the beginning, before Scott had taken him aside and told him, begged him, to give them a chance.

Scott always had a bigger heart than his.

Stiles looks between Deucalion and Kali’s lifeless body, frowning.

“Some way to treat your pack,” he muses.

“Alphas gain strength by killing their betas,” Deucalion says, and he flexes his hand with a dark smile “the stronger the beta, the stronger the Alpha will be.”

Deucalion opens his mouth, ready and willing to launch into is undoubtedly a convincing supervillain style speech about joining his ranks, about becoming a ‘true Alpha’, when there’s a ping, and Stiles holds up a finger, even though he knows Deucalion can’t see it, and scoops his phone out of his pocket.

“Hmm,” he frowns, staring at the screen, tapping out a response, anger radiating in his direction as the casualness of his stance.

“Right,” he says, before Deucalion can pick up his place, “you haven’t been sending us creatures that go bump in the night as a test, have you?”

Whatever Deucalion expected to hear, that wasn’t it, but the flitter of shock across his face is enough to answer Stiles question.

“You literally came here to see if I would kill all of my pack and join yours? You thought that you could make me choose between my pack and _myself?_ ” Stiles can’t help the incredulity that creeps into his voice at that.

“You want more?” Deucalion asks, and Stiles snorts.

“No. That’s enough,” Stiles says, and honestly, it sounds relieved. He smiles, just a small smile.

His heart thumps, a heavy base in the otherwise silent room.   _Bad-dum. Bad-dum._ He lifts his hand into the air, the palm flat and outward facing.

_Bad-dum._

_Bad-dum._

“You know, it’s probably a bad thing how thrilling this is,” Stiles muses, knowing Deucalion isn’t speaking because his vocal cords had just crumbled to dust, “but this is seriously the most badass supervillain thing I’ve ever done.”

He closes his eyes.

_Bad-_

His hand snaps into a fist, and the crunch that follows makes Stiles’ stomach flip. He twists his wrist, pushing the power, magic, forcing it to bend to his will. Behind him there is a sickening screech, piercing the air.

- _dum._

He opens his eyes, and looks behind him to survey the damage to the ones still alive. He didn’t need to see Deucalion to know he was dead and gone, a mess of broken, blood, and skin. The twins were on opposite sides of the room, staring at each other as if for the first time. Not killing them had been Liam’s request, and he was happy to honor it.

“ **Submit** ,” Stiles’ growls, and he can feel Derek in the air, on his tongue, saying it with him. The feel of his pack at his side, stronger than ever, and he’s tethered.

The twins’ eyes flash, a brilliant, bright blue, necks stretched to the side, and Stiles _grins_.

\--

“How are they recovering,” Stiles asks, concern thick, and Wendy laughs softly, smacking his arm. With the threat neutralized, she was much more relaxed.

“They’re fine Stiles,” she assures anyway, “we split the power evenly, nobody was over taxed.”

Stiles scratched at the back of his neck.

“I don’t know how to,” he starts, and Wendy’s face gets a little bit more serious, a little motherly.

“Don’t you be fretting,” she insists, “consider us even for my grandson,” she says with a wider smile.

Stiles returned the smile, trying not to think about an infant body, a panicked mother, and Scott breathing _literal life_ into the baby born on the pack’s doorstep. Wendy’s daughter didn’t even know she was pregnant when she went into labor negotiating a treaty with the Hale pack. Stiles had tried, many times, to insist that saving the life of Wendy’s grandson didn’t constitute a debt, but she had insisted.

“How is little Scotty?” Stiles asks, and Wendy hooks an arm into Stiles, strolling with him across to where Angela was holding a tissue under her blood nose, grinning widely at them.

“Amazing. An absolute bundle of screaming, pooping joy. Sarah couldn’t be happier,” Wendy assures, before turning to Angela.

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want me to heal that for you?” Wendy offers again and Angela shakes her head.

“I like my war wound,” she confesses, and Wendy smiles softly.

“Not to sound like a match maker or anything, but you seem to be getting on,” Stiles muses and Wendy smacks his arm again.

“Wendy is going to teach us some stuff,” Angela says, and Wendy nods.

“Not blending,” Wendy insists, and Angela makes an agreeing noise, “but helping.”

“Which you clearly intended,” Wendy chastised, and Stiles shrugged unapologetically.

“I’m uncomfortable being manipulated by an Alpha,” Angela teases, and Stiles grins at her, loose-limbed and pleased.

“Please, you love it,” Stiles preens, and Angela rolled her eyes. Across the room, someone calls for her and she jumps off the table where she was sitting, waving almost shyly to Stiles as she passed.

“That girl is giving me emotional whiplash,” Stiles comments, and Wendy laughs whole heartedly at that.

Lydia beckons Stiles from the kitchen and Stiles says a quick and quiet goodbye to Wendy to follow her.

The loft was full of pleasant, warm conversation, and for once, there wasn’t the lingering feeling of fear settling across the shoulders of all of the pack.

Lydia grimaced at him like she knew that and still had to ruin it, and he held up a hand to stop her.

“I know,” he says, and Lydia raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow at him.

“Do you,” she challenges sharply, and Stiles is so very glad she was on his side.

“We’ll discuss it in the morning,” he says, and Lydia frowns at him, but he knows.

“We need this,” he can’t hide the slightly desperate note in his voice, “to celebrate our victories. To spend the night with our pack,” he adds, glancing over to where Ethan and Aiden were sitting. They were the only ones who looked uncomfortable, which seemed particularly difficult with most of the Hale pack sitting _on top of them_. They weren’t pack yet, not fully. They’d done things that Stiles wasn’t entirely sure he trusted them not to do again – their road to trust would be longer and windier than Liam’s.

Lydia agrees without too much of a fight, walking past him with a sniff. She joins the pack, settling heavily on Jackson’s lap, and glaring at the twins until they look away and down.

So very, _very_ glad she was on their side.

Stiles follows her, seeking out Derek. He finds him sprawled on the couch with Liam tucked under his arm on one side, half asleep. Derek watches him walk toward him, and Isaac pushes of Derek’s other side shifting to curl against Scott who was pushed up against the arm rest. Stiles let himself settle into the space Isaac left, rubbing his face against Derek’s chest.

He knows, of course, how temporary this reprieve would be. This was not the end he had wanted, or the end he expected. There was more to be done. If the Alpha pack wasn’t responsible for the supernatural bombardment they’d been receiving, that meant something else was. Lydia’s face clearly said that whatever bad feeling she’d been having hadn’t gone away with the Alpha pack’s destruction.

But they’d deal with that tomorrow.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://www.captainnaustralia.tumblr.com) is my Tumblr  
> [This](http://www.intergalacticju.tumblr.com) is Ju's Tumblr  
> [This](http://www.pacificrimmers.tumblr.com) is Lana's Tumblr


End file.
